Preface

[0.1] Errors and omission are unavoidable in scientific writing. They are the writer’s equivalent of statistical Type I and Type II errors, respectively. And just as with statistical data, I have worked hard to keep all errors and omission to a minimum in relation to the number of justified statements and judgements. Still, I need to start with a major disclaimer: this book is a work in progress. The current version undoubtedly contains numerous errors, omissions, inaccuracies and wrong generalisations. I can say this with certainty because I have been changing, adding and deleting details up to the last moment before publication of the current version of this book. And I do not expect it to stop here. Actually, the work-in-progress status is intended to be taken quite literally: I plan to update and revise this book regularly in the future. Any progress can be followed online at github.com/cysouw/diathesis. I welcome any suggestions for improvement, which can be submitted as an ‘issue’ on that website, or, even better, as a ‘pull request’ including proposed changes and corrections.

[0.2] This book is about German grammar, but the book is written in English. These two decisions have a purely personal background. First, the idea to write about German grammar arose in the context of me teaching German grammar at the Philipps-University in Marburg. Actually, the diversity of diathesis could, and should, be investigated in the same depth in other language besides German. Second, the book is written in English first and foremost because I personally feel more comfortable writing in English than in German. Also, I think that the current approach to diathesis is also of interest to readers that do not care too much about all minute details of German grammar. And for the readers that are interested in those details of the German language, I assume that they both have a working knowledge of English (so they can read this text) and of German (so they can understand the German examples). For that reason I decided to omit any interlinear glossing of the examples. Most examples are simple enough to be understood even with just an approximate understanding of German. Adding interlinear glossing throughout would be an enormous undertaking, which I think is not worthwhile given the intended readership.

[0.3] This book is written in Pandoc Markdown. Markdown (commonmark.org) allows for clean and readable raw text, while Pandoc (pandoc.org) provides easy transformations of the text into beautiful output, for example in formats like Latex/PDF or HTML. I have used various extensions for Pandoc (‘filters’ in Pandoc-parlance), for example to format and number linguistic examples. More information on these filters can be found on the github webpage mentioned above.

[0.4] The many lists, examples and subsections of this book make it almost a serialised database, and I have included many cross references to connect related parts throughout. To read the resulting hypertext I would urge the reader to try out an electronic version, either PDF or HTML. I personally have become really enamoured with the HTML version as it allows for easy searching and for quick forward-and-backward jumping through the text using our already internalised muscle-memory from web browsing. Also, the advances in CSS-styling are progressed to such an extend that the layout of HTML is almost approaching LateX sophistication, while adding a responsive/adaptive design (Marcotte 2010). Additionally, the file size of the HTML version is substantially smaller than the PDF prepared with XeLateX. The HTML version of this book is prepared as a single standalone file that can be used offline. This file is opened in a webbrowser, even when the file is saved locally. It just uses the web browser as a text-rendering engine.

[0.5] Of the many students that have participated in my lectures and seminars (and had to endure my work-in-progress) I would like to explicitly thank Dennis Beitel, Franziska Beyer, Patricia Bier, Katja Daube, Milena Gropp, Eric Ilten, Jens Jakob, Christina Jann, Vanessa Lang, Katrin Leinweber, Rieke Hänche, Philip Ossowski, Nico Reinicke, Kristina Splanemann and Stella van den Berg. They wrote very useful term papers or theses about topics related to the topics discussed here.

1 Setting the scene

1.1 The daunting diversity of diathesis

[1.1] The quintessential example of German diathesis, found in virtually every grammatical descriptions of German, is the werden + Partizip passive construction (1.1 a). A central characteristic of this construction is that the state-of-affairs as described by this passive is fundamentally the same as in the corresponding active (1.1 b), though the sentence structure of course differs between the two expressions.

[1.2] This approach to diathesis, viz. different grammatical sentence structures that express approximately the same state-of-affairs, is applicable to a large number of grammatical phenomena in German. For example, some verbs allow for passive-like constructions without any werden auxiliary, often called ‘anticausative’ (1.2 a). Other verbs allow for an alternation between a case-marked accusative and a prepositional phrase, often called ‘antipassive’ (1.2 b). Further, there exist many different kinds of diathesis marked by a reflexive pronoun sich (1.2 c) or marked by preverbs like ent- (1.2 d). Many auxiliary-like construction beyond the werden + Infinitiv passive also show diathesis, e.g. sein + zu + Infinitiv (1.2 e).¹

[1.3] All in all, there are about 250 different German diatheses described in this book, some highly productive, some only attested for a handful of verbs. The main goal of this book is to present this wealth of grammatical possibility in a unified manner, while at the same time attempting to classify and organise this diversity. I will make no attempt to fit all these constructional possibilities of the German language into any specific grammatical framework, although the collection of diatheses presented here might be taken as a modelling-challenge for your favourite grammatical theory.

[1.4] It might come as a surprise that there are so many different diatheses in German, but my impression is that German is no exception among the world’s languages in this respect. I expect that all languages have a wealth of different ways in which to construe a sentence around a lexical predicate. In a sense, diatheses allow for the expression of different perspectives on the event described, something that is arguably a common desire of any language user.

[1.5] This first chapter summarises the basic definitional properties of diathesis. The next Chapter 2 describes in detail how diatheses are analysed and classified. Chapter 3 presents a summary of the 70+ major German diatheses and proposes German names for those structures. Chapters 4 to 12 are the main, almost database-like, chapters discussing each sentence structure separately. Finally, Chapters 13 to 15 discuss additional phenomena that are related to diathesis.

[1.6] In this book, each diathesis has its own sub-subsection with an unique section header that can be used as a name to refer to the diathesis (e.g. Section 9.5.14 on the “werden + Partizip passive”). Many of these unique names are quite boring, but hopefully descriptively useful for future reference. Individual verbs (often with concrete examples) are listed with each diathesis to show the extend of its applicability. Neither these lists of verbs nor the examples are intended to be exhaustive in any way. They should be seen as a first step towards more in-depth research into individual diatheses or into the different constructional possibilities that exist for individual verbs.

[1.7] The current attempt to present an all-encompassing survey of German diatheses builds on a rich scholarly tradition (with many scholarly precursors to be cited in appropriate places throughout this work). A comparable and highly influential survey of diathesis for English is Levin (1993), followed by a similar attempt for German by Sauerland (1994). A recent cross-linguistic survey of valency and diathesis in this tradition is edited by Malchukov & Comrie (2015), which also includes data on German (Haspelmath & Baumann 2013). Independent of Levin’s work, there is a long tradition in the German grammatical literature to investigate diathesis, e.g. as ‘Konversenverhältnis der Aktanten’ (Eroms 1980: 24; cf. Heringer 1968). An early attempt at a survey of various diatheses is presented by Höhle (1978). Basic summaries of german diathesis in the context of valency can be found in Eroms (2000: Ch. 10) or Ágel (2000: Ch. 6). There also are a few monographs about specific German diatheses (e.g. Leirbukt 1997; Holl 2010; Jäger 2013) and recently some corpus studies into the effect of specific diatheses on individual verbs have appeared (De Vaere, De Cuypere & Willems 2018; Imo 2018; Dux 2020: Ch. 6).

[1.8] Diathesis is of course closely linked to the concept of valency, so the groundbreaking valency dictionary for German by Helbig and Schenkel (1983) deserves mentioning. They identify the problem that certain verbs can be used in different constructions, but diatheses are not investigated consistently in their dictionary. Another highly influential valency dictionary for German, edited by Schumacher (1986; also the precursor Engel & Schumacher 1978), discusses passive diatheses for all verb. I see the current survey of German diatheses as a first step in extending such valency dictionaries into even more all-encompassing dictionaries that discuss all possible clause constructions for each verb.

1.2 Defining diathesis

[1.9] A diathesis is defined here as special kind of alternation between two different clause constructions. To properly define the notion ‘diathesis’, I will first define ‘alternation’ in general. Next, the definition of ‘clause alternation’ will be built on that basis. Finally, a diathesis will then be defined as special kind of clause alternation. A few crucial concepts that are used in the following definitions will be discussed in more detail in subsequent sections.

Alternation

[1.10] An alternation (or simply ‘grammatical marking’) is defined as follows:

• An alternation consist of two different linguistic constructions, i.e. there are two alternants.
• The lexical root (or possibly larger linguistic entity) does not change in the alternation, i.e. there is some fundamental linguistic material in both alternants that remains the same.
• Typically, the difference between these alternants is overtly indicated by the presence of some grammatical linguistic elements.
• Typically, the overt marking introduces a direction into the alternation, i.e. one alternant consists of less/shorter/zero linguistic elements (‘less marked’) and one consists of more/longer/overt linguistic material (‘more marked’). In some cases, the direction of the alternation remains undecidable, i.e. the alternation is equipollent.
• The set of roots (or possibly larger linguistic entities) to which the alternation applies form an empirical linguistic class. Such an empirical class often has a semantic/functional interpretation, but not necessarily so.

[1.11] Alternations are the basis of all grammatical analysis.² They include for example:

1. morphological oppositions, like singular Haus ‘house’ vs. plural Häuser ‘houses’.
2. oppositions of grammatical forms, like synthetic present er schläft ‘he sleeps’ vs. analytic perfect er hat geschlafen ‘he has slept’
3. different sentence constructions attested with specific verbs, like transitive Ich verkaufe das Buch ‘I sell the book’ vs. reflexive anticausative with obligatory adverbial Das Buch verkauft sich gut ‘the book is selling well’ (see Section 8.5.2).

Clause alternation

[1.12] Based on the definition of an alternation, a clause alternation is defined as follows:

• In a clause alternation both alternants are monoclausal, i.e. both alternants contain a single main predicate. For German, the definitional property of monoclausality will be a phenomenon called ‘coherence’ (see Section 1.3.1).
• In both alternants, the main predicate consists of the same lexeme, i.e both contain the same verb and the meaning of the lexical verb does not (substantially) change between the alternants (see Section 1.3.2).
• The lexical roles of the verb do not change between the alternants. Lexical roles are an inherent part of the meaning of a verb and alternations do not change them. Note, however, that there might be new roles introduced or some roles might be left unexpressed (see Section 1.3.3).
• The meaning/function of the whole clause changes between the alternants. This functional difference is the whole point of having a clause alternation in the first place (see Section 1.3.5).
• A specific clause alternation is only applicable to a restricted set of verbs. The list of applicable verbs constitutes the domain of application of the alternation. Any semantic/syntactic characterisation of these applicable verbs should be seen as a summary of the domain of application, not its definition (see Section 1.3.4).

[1.13] Clause alternations are widespread when auxiliaries are introduced, like modal müssen ‘have to’ (1.3 a), see Section 10.4.1. However, clause alternations are attested with many more different kinds of marking, like the verb particle auf marking completeness of the action (1.3 b), see Section 5.7.6, or the somewhat mysterious ‘free’ reflexive sich with verbs like ansehen ‘look at’ (1.3 c), see Section 6.4.4. Arguably, the special word order in German subordinate clauses (viz. the finite verb occurs clause-final) can also be considered to be a clause alternation (1.3 d).

Diathesis

[1.14] Based on the notion of a clause alternation, a diathesis (sometimes also known as ‘valency alternation’) is defined as follows:

• A diathesis is a clause alternation in which at least one of the lexical roles is overtly marked differently between the clausal alternants, i.e. at least one of the roles is remapped to a different grammatical expression. In other words, a diathesis is a clause alternation with a co-occurring role-marking alternation (see Section 2.4).
• Remapped roles do not substantially change their meaning, i.e. ‘who does what to whom’ does not change. However, the details of the relation between the main predicate and the remapped roles can (and normally will) change. There will be slight changes in meaning, e.g. aspects like the role’s influence on the action, or its affectedness by the predicate, might change. As an extreme case, the remapping of a role can consist in the addition of a completely new role or in the complete removal of an existing role (see Section 2.2).
• As is true for all alternations, a diathesis has a direction from a formally ‘less marked’ to a ‘more marked’ alternant. However, in some special instances a diathesis can show no other overt marking than the change in marking of the reframed roles itself. This will be called a covert (or equipollent, or bare) diathesis. The different forms of marking of diatheses are the basic organisational structure of this book (see Section 2.3).
• As a practical restriction, I will only consider diatheses in which one alternant is a basic clause with a single finite verb. In principle, when there is a diathesis between a basic clause and structure A, and another diathesis between a basic clause and Structure B, then there is also a diathesis between structures A and B. However, such diatheses are not included here. It is a major goal of this book to present a precise description of the mappings between basic clauses and all attested diatheses (see Section 2.7).

[1.15] The prototypical example of a diathesis is the werden + Partizip passive (1.4 a), see Section 9.5.14. In both clause alternants the same state of affairs is described, but the marking of the participants is different. However, the diversity of diatheses in German is enormous as this book attempts to show. There are, for example, covert diatheses (i.e. diatheses without any marking on the verb) like the infamous anticausative in (1.4 b), see Section 4.5.5, or antipassives marked with a reflexive pronoun as shown in (1.4 c), see Section 6.7.5.

[1.16] Hidden in these succinct definitions there are various intricate grammatical concepts that need some more discussion in subsequent sections. The most general notions are discussed directly below, while the specific discussion of the analysis and classification of different kinds of diathesis is postponed for the next chapter.

1.3 Definitional details

1.3.1 Monoclausality and coherence

[1.17] Diatheses are defined here as alternations between single clauses with the same main verb. However, a single clause in German can sometimes consist of multiple verb forms. It is crucial to strictly distinguish between situations in which a multi-verb construction is monoclausal and when it is not. The basis of the definition of monoclausality in German is a concept called coherence.

[1.18] All diatheses listed in this book are monoclausal. Besides trying to list all German diatheses, I will also list all non-diathetical clause alternation, i.e monoclausal alternations without any change in role-marking (these are always listed in the .4 section of each data chapter). This book can thus also be read as a listing of all German monoclausal constructions, with or without role remapping. Somewhat unexpectedly, the number of alternations without any role remapping (i.e. the alternations without diathesis) is much smaller than the number of monoclausal alternations with changes in role marking (i.e. the diatheses).

[1.19] To define monoclausality, the crucial characteristic of German syntax is that the finite verb is moved to the end of the sentence in a subordinate clauses. I will use the dummy main sentence Es ist bekannt, dass… ‘it is known that’ to force a subordinate construction. The position of the finite verb in the subordinate clause can be used the identify the boundary of the clause: everything that can occur before the finite verb belongs within the clause; everything that has to come after the finite verb belongs to a different clause. For example, the simple sentence (1.5 a) will turn into (1.5 b) as a subordinate clause, with the finite verb at the end; (1.5 c) with constituents after the finite verb is not possible. So the whole sentence in (1.5 a) is a single clause. Constructions with such a pattern will be called coherent, following Bech (1955); see also Kiss (1995) for a more in-depth and more extensive discussion of the concept ‘coherence’. Coherent constructions are considered to be monoclausal.

[1.20] Exactly the same coherence is attested in auxiliary constructions with participles (1.6) and infinitives (1.7). Such constructions are also monoclausal.

[1.21] Constructions with zu and infinitive are sometimes coherent, e.g. (1.8) with the finite verb geben ‘to give’, and sometimes non-coherent, e.g. (1.9) with the finite verb behaupten ‘to claim’. The coherent construction in (1.8 a) is thus monoclausal, while the non-coherent construction in (1.9 a) consists of two clauses.

[1.22] In some intermediate cases both orders are possible, as shown with the finite verb helfen ‘to help’ in (1.10).

[1.23] Maybe surprisingly, when the above definition of monoclausality is strictly followed, then there appear to be dozens of verbs that can be used as the finite ‘auxiliary’ in a coherent multi-verb construction. When used as finite auxiliaries, these verbs are more or less strongly grammaticalised, i.e. they shed much of their lexical meaning when used in multi-verb constructions. Such grammaticalised verbs are classified into different groups and referred to by many different names in the German grammatical literature, e.g. Hilfsverb, Kopulaverb, Modalverb, Modalitätsverb, Halbmodalverb (Eisenberg 2006a), Funktionsverb (Polenz 1963 cited in Kamber 2008: 34), Strukturverb (Weber 2005), or Stützverb (Seelbach 1991 cited in Kamber 2008: 34). I will not pursue the question here how to classify these verbs into different kinds. I will simply refer to the whole group of these ‘auxiliary’ verbs as light verbs. All light verbs that will be discussed in later chapters are shown here in alphabetical order in (1.11), though note that not all of them are involved in diathesis. A few of the verbs listed below are only attested in monoclausal alternation without diathesis.

1.3.2 Grammaticalisation of lexical meaning

[1.24] A difficult problem is the question whether it is really the same verb that is used in two alternating constructions of a diathesis. For example, the verb trinken ‘to drink’ is a regular transitive verb, but when used intransitively, er trinkt ‘he drinks’, it has a clear implication that his drinking includes too much alcohol, so it might be better translated as ‘he is an alcoholic’. In this case, this intransitive interpretation is probably best analysed as a conventional implicature, because the alcoholism aspect of the meaning can be suppressed given the right context.

[1.25] In general, when the same lexical verb is used in different alternating constructions, then there is (of course) a difference in meaning between the two occurrences. However, ideally this difference is completely induced by the respective constructions and not by the lexical verb itself. Yet, it is extremely common for the combination of a lexical verb with the surrounding construction to grammaticalise into a new meaning. For example, the verb auftreten means something like ‘to act’ as an intransitive, but to kick open as a transitive. Both meanings originate from the meaning ‘to step on something (by foot)’. Likewise, historical processes can lead to current homophony of two different lexemes. This appears to be the case for example with the verb abhauen, which is a transitive verb meaning ‘cut of’ (e.g. Er hat den Ast abgehauen). However, it has attained another usage during the course of the 20th century as an intransitive verb meaning ‘run away’ (e.g. Er ist abgehauen), probably based on a southern German dialectal meaning of hauen ‘to go, to walk’ (Pfeiffer 1993: ‘hauen’, accessed 12.12.2018).

[1.26] In between those extremes (i.e. conventional implicature and different lexicalisation) there exist various intermediate phenomena. For example, the verb hängen ‘to hang’ can be used as a regular intransitive verb with a location, like Er hängt an einem Seil ‘He dangles to a rope’, but the specific combination with the preposition an can also have a special reading of ‘being emotionally attached to something’, like in Er hängt an seinem Teddy ‘He is (emotionally) attached to his Teddy’. In this case it seems most appropriate to interpret the combination hängen an as a separate lexicalisation, though the path of the conventional implicature can still be intuitively grasped.

[1.27] As with all grammaticalisation processes, it is often difficult to decide where to draw the line on the continuum between conventional implicature, metaphorical extension (trinken) and contextual lexicalisation (hängen an) or completely different lexicalisation (auftreten, abhauen). I tend to be rather lenient in allowing slightly different meanings to be included as the ‘same’ verb, but will exclude clear examples of the latter two types on the continuum as separate lexicalisations of homophonous elements.

1.3.3 Lexeme-specific lexical roles

[1.28] A crucial aspect of diathesis is that the lexical roles do not change, only the grammatical encoding of the roles changes. For example, the verb füllen ‘to fill’ occurs in various monoclausal constructions (1.12), but the roles of (i) ‘filler’, (ii) ‘filled container’ and (iii) ‘filling substance’ are always the same. The different grammatical forms that are used to express these roles are added as subscripts to each sentence in the examples below.

[1.29] Already from this example it becomes clear that it is often really difficult, if not impossible, to attach a specific valency to a verb. Given that most (and possibly all) German lexemes show some kind of diathesis, I reject the traditional notion of a fixed valency belonging to a specific verb (see Section 2.2 for a more extensive discussion). Alternatively, I propose that it is possibly to list all lexeme-specific roles (or equivalently lexical roles) as a fixed characteristic of each lexical verb. The following criteria will be used to determine the lexical roles of a verb:

[1.30] First, each role that is case-marked in at least one clause-alternant is a lexeme-specific role. In the example of füllen in (1.12), each of the three roles is marked as nominative, accusative or dative in at least one of the alternants, so all three roles are lexeme-specific. Various exceptions and stipulations to this criterion are discussed in Section 4.2.

[1.31] Second, all obligatory prepositional phrases are lexeme-specific roles. Such prepositional phrases, that cannot be left out, are not very widespread in German and mostly designate a location. Some verbs always expect such a location-role (1.13 a,b), see e.g. Section 5.3.4, Section 6.3.4, but more widespread are resultative diatheses that introduce an obligatory local role (1.13 c,d), see e.g. Section 5.8.7.

[1.32] Third, there is a large class of lexeme-specific prepositional phrases that I will call governed prepositions, like arbeiten an ‘to work on’ (1.14 a). These prepositional phrases are not obligatorily present (1.14 b). The intuition behind governed prepositions is that these prepositions are lexically determined by the verb and often strongly grammaticalised both semantically and structurally. Semantically, the preposition an with the verb arbeiten ‘to work’ (1.14 a) is strongly bleached with none of its local ‘touching’ meaning remaining. Syntactically, the prepositional phrase in arbeiten an can be filled with a complement clause of the form daran, dass … (1.14 c). This syntactic criterion will be used as the main characteristic to identify governed prepositions. Various exceptions and stipulations to this criterion are discussed in Section 5.2.

[1.33] Under this approach, there are a few lexical roles that appear to be very widespread, up to the point of seemingly being universally applicable to all verbs. If that would be the case, then it would defeat the idea of lexeme-specific roles. However, on closer inspection my impression is that there are no roles that apply to all verbs. The closest contender is, arguably, the role of causer, which can be introduced to almost any German verb by using the lassen + Infinitiv diathesis (1.15), see Section 10.6.2. However, there is a small group of verbs that do not allow for this diathesis, like gefallen ‘to like’ (1.16). This shows that even virtually universal roles are still lexically determined.

[1.34] Such lexeme-specific roles are called ‘verb-specific semantic roles’ in Van Valin (2004) and ‘microroles’ in Hartmann et al. (2014). The obvious next step (as discussed in both these papers) is to cluster such microroles into clusters of semantic/thematic mesoroles, i.e. widespread roles like ‘agent’, ‘patiens’, ‘experiencer’ etc. Such semantic roles are used constantly in contemporary linguistics, but they are surprisingly ill-defined. For example, given a random German verb like füllen as exemplified at the start of this section: what should be its semantic roles, and what criteria should be used to determine this? Hartmann et al. (2014) and Cysouw (2014) use cross-linguistic data to approach this question. However, such an approach does not allow for language-specific definitions, which is the problem in the current example of German.

[1.35] My proposal for a language-specific determination of semantic mesoroles is to use the applicability of diatheses as a criterion. For example, a ‘German Patiens’ might be defined as those lexical roles that are changed from accusative to nominative in the werden passive diathesis. Or more general: a semantic role can be defined by a combination of applicable diatheses. The research project to determine suitable combinations of diatheses will not be pursued here, but left for a follow-up investigation.

1.3.4 Domain of application and verb classes

[1.36] A widespread assumption in linguistic analysis is that most alternations (including diatheses) have a sensible domain of application. This is the idea that there is some rationale, often a kind of semantic characterisation, explaining which roots allow for a specific kind of linguistic marking (e.g. only transitive verbs allow for a werden passive).³ Although I also believe that many alternations, including diatheses, mostly behave sensibly, I would also warn not to expect too much regular (semantic) generalisations hidden in grammatical structure. Many grammatical regularities have unexpected exceptions, be it because of haphazard diachronic changes or through partial analogical extension. Even stronger, some grammatical marking appears to be almost completely without (semantic) rationale, like the assignment of plural allomorphy in German. If that can happen in morphology, it can also happen in syntax.

[1.37] As a practical approach to the domain of application of a specific alternation (say, which verbs allow for the werden passive, or for the reflexive anticausative, etc.), I propose to always first enumerate as much examples as possible. In other words, first inductively establish an empirical verb class of those verbs that happen to be attested. In this book, I will not be satisfied with four or five cases that suggest a neat semantic coherence for a specific diathesis, but list as many as possible further examples, idiosyncratic as they may be. Only after such a formal listing of the domain of application (which ideally needs much more corpus research as I have been able to perform here) is it possible to investigate the presence of any (semantic) rationale. In many cases there might be a partial rationale, but it is just as likely (and just as interestingly) to have to conclude that there apparently is none.

[1.38] Taking this principle one step further, I propose to define the domain of application as the concrete listing of all examples. Any (semantic) characterisation is then always a post-hoc generalisation, not a definition. This radically lexicalist interpretation is the approach that I will follow in this book. For each diathesis I will list as many as possible example verbs that take part in the diatheses (for some I will reverse the approach and list verbs that are not part of the domain of application). These lexical lists (i.e. the empirical verb classes) are the definition of the domain of application. For some diatheses, I will speculate about semantic generalisations, but I consider these generalisations always to be secondary to the concrete listing of examples.

[1.39] This principle of the definition by listing even holds for questions of productivity. For example, when somebody would propose a nonce-verb like flurchten to be a new verb for the German language in an experimental setting, then its meaning is partially defined by stating what kind of diatheses it can take part in. Depending on how such a new verb is contextualised, the following construction might or might not be judged grammatical. The choices that will be made influence the meaning of the verb.

1.3.5 Functional analysis

[1.40] Intimately connected to the domain of application (i.e. which verbs allow for which diathesis) is the question as to the meaning/function of a specific diathesis. In essence, this question asks for a description of the difference between the meaning of the two alternants of a diathesis. For example, what is the difference between the transitive (1.18 a) and the corresponding reflexive anticausative (1.18 b), see Section 6.5.2.

[1.41] In general, it turns out to be extremely difficult to give a concise description of such differences, and I will mostly refrain from trying to provide such descriptions. Each diathesis is actually its own research project, preferably investigated using predictive corpus analysis (cf. the large literature on the English dative alternation, for German see e.g. De Vaere, De Cuypere & Willems 2018). The actual lists of verbs that allow for a specific diatheses (i.e. the domain of application, see above) also seems to be an important datapoint to investigate the function of a diathesis.

[1.42] The problem of a functional description for a diathesis becomes even more difficult with the realisation that there are dozens of diatheses, often highly similar to each other. For example, it is really difficult (cf. Schäfer 2007; Kurogo 2016) to characterise the difference between the reflexive anticausative above in (1.18) and the unmarked anticausative in (1.19), see Section 4.5.5.

[1.43] An important side-note in this respect are those alternations that have similar formal characteristics as diatheses, but which do not have any role-remapping. Such sentence alternations are not considered to be diatheses here (they will be called ‘epithesis’), but they are still discussed in the .4 sections of each chapter. An example is the phenomenon of ‘free’ reflexives (1.20), see Section 6.4.4. Although there is no role-remapping in this alternation (and thus no diathesis), it turns out to be really difficult to describe the difference between (1.20 a) and (1.20 b). All sentence alternations, with or without role-remapping, are in need of a functional analysis, and most such analyses will involve substantial research.

1.4 Method

[1.44] Methodologically, I see the approach in this book as an attempt to unify grammatical research with lexicographic research, two aspects of linguistics that are often considered to be separate inquiries. In contrast to such a separation, I would like to propose a view of linguistics that might be called grammar of the lexicon (cf. Levin 1993: 2-4, but one might just as well include all of construction grammar here). In this approach, each grammatical phenomenon should always be linked to individual occurrences, either types (lexicon) or tokens (corpus). It is my experience from compiling the current compendium of diatheses that identifying and characterising a specific structure is really just ‘step one’ of grammatical research. Only by trying to find more examples, with different lexemes and in different contexts, it becomes clear how prominent and varying a grammatical structure really is.

[1.45] As as rule-of-thumb, I propose the 10-examples-in-15-minutes-rule as step two of grammatical research. If you think that a particular construction is widespread, or maybe typical for a specific class of words (e.g. typical for ‘intransitives’), then take 15 minutes to search for examples, either in your own intuitions or in one of the many online databases or corpora. Resources like the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS), the various online offerings of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), or just a Google ‘exact search’ are really just a click away and completely rejuvenate linguistic research. If you are not able to list 10 examples in 15 minutes, then go back to the drawing board and reconsider your intuitions.

[1.46] Such a quick-and-dirty 15-minute survey of course still only represents a preliminary step. It is this level of detail that I have aimed for in this book. Each sub-subsection about an individual diathesis lists lexemes that can be used in this diathesis, and includes examples of the diathesis, either from my own intuitions or from any of the above mentioned databases. I plan to fine-tune these lists in future revisions of this book, but the real research is only yet to come. Next steps would be the in-depth investigation of individual diathesis by sampling examples in corpora and formulating predictive parameters to explain their usage. For example, De Vaere et al. (2018) investigate the dative antipassive (see Section 5.7.9) for just a single lexeme geben. As there are hundreds of diatheses and hundreds of verbs listed in this book, this shows that there are tens of thousands of research projects just waiting to be tackled.

2 The structure of a diathesis

2.1 Terminology

[2.1] In their cross-linguistic survey of diathesis, Zuñiga & Kittilä (2019) distinguish between the terms ‘diathesis’, ‘diathetical operation’, ‘grammatical voice’ and ‘transitivity’. I completely subscribe to these conceptual distinctions. However, throughout this book I have decided to simplify the terminology and basically use the term ‘diathesis’ for all four concepts. Still, the concepts valency (Section 2.2), voice (Section 2.3), and diathetical operation (Section 2.4) are central in the analysis of the structure of a diathesis and will be discussed extensively in this chapter. Two new concepts are introduced as well, namely stacking (Section 2.5) and chaining (Section 2.6). Finally, I will present an extensive discussion about naming diatheses (Section 2.7).

[2.2] A diathesis (as defined here) is an alternation between two clausal construction. To be more precise, this is what is called a ‘diathetical operation’ in Zuñiga & Kittilä (2019: 4), see Section 2.4. Each of the alternants show a different mapping of (grammatical) expressions onto (semantic) roles. Individually, each such mapping between expressions and roles is called a ‘diathesis’ in Zuñiga & Kittilä (2019: 4). However, because I will only consider diathetical operations between an ‘unmarked’ basic clause and a ‘marked’ alternant, I have decided to simplify the terminology in this book. Both the alternation itself (Zuñiga & Kittilä’s ‘diathetical operation’, e.g. ‘causativisation’) and the derived alternant (Zuñiga & Kittilä’s ‘diathesis’, e.g. ‘causative’) will be referred to here simply as diathesis.

[2.3] A side-effect of this approach is that ‘active’ is not a diathesis, but simply the unmarked counterpart of a diathetical operation. Even stronger, I will refrain from using the term ‘active’ because it immediately conjures up ‘passive’ as its antithesis. This opposition is too much of an oversimplification as ‘passive’ is just one of the hundreds of possible diatheses. Also, the ‘active’ does not necessarily describes an action, so content-wise this term is likewise ill-fitting. As an alternative, I will use the term basic clause as the unmarked base of comparison for all clause alternations. A basic clause is a clause with a single (finite) verb from, either in the German Präsens or Imperfekt tense.⁴ All other verb forms, including the Perfekt and the other traditional German tense-aspect distinctions, are all derived clauses, i.e. the result of some kind of clause alternations. A clause alternation without diathesis will be called epithesis, from Greek ἐπίθεσις ‘placement upon, imposition’. Epithesis is grammatical marking ‘on top of’ a basic clause.⁵ A clause alternation with diathesis is simple referred to as diathesis, from Greek διάθεσις ‘placement in order, (re)arrangement’.

[2.4] The actual linguistic marking of the diathesis (for example by verbal morphology or auxiliaries) is called ‘grammatical voice’ in Zuñiga & Kittilä (2019: 4). In this book, each diathesis is defined as a combination of a (re-)mapping of roles and a specific kind of linguistic marking of the main predicate. So again, this extra terminological distinction is not necessary. The formal expression (‘grammatical voice’) is simply a definitional part of each diathesis here. Still, the different kinds of grammatical voice in German are used in this book as a major organisational characteristic for the separation of the data chapters (see Section 2.3).

[2.5] The term ‘transitivity’ (Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019: 3; following Hopper & Thompson 1980) describes a (recurrent) connection between a diathetical operation and semantic effects on the meaning of the clause. For example, when an accusative argument is remapped onto a prepositional phrase, this often implies less involvement of the argument. The details of such semantic effects of each of the diatheses in this book is a fascinating topic, for which I unfortunately can only offer limited insights throughout. In practice, I assume that each diathesis as described here has some kind of semantic effect, but the details of these effect need much more detailed research that has to be provided by subsequent work.

[2.6] Finally, I prefer to use the term ‘diathesis’ over the frequently attested term ‘valency alternation’, because there are many diatheses in which the valency does not change between the alternants. For example, in (2.1) both sentences have the same valency with a nominative, accusative and prepositional phrase. However, there is a clear diathesis, though arguably there is no change in (basic) valency. Strictly speaking, valency alternations are a subset of all diatheses.

2.2 Valency

2.2.1 Utterance valency and lexical roles

[2.7] Valency is traditionally interpreted as a fixed constructional characteristic of a lexical verb, e.g. the verb geben ‘to give’ is said to be ditransitive.⁶ A central thesis of this book is that this conception of valency is misguided. Individual verbs can (and normally will) be used in many different constructions with different valency (i.e. most verbs show some kind of diathesis). Consider for example the verb wehen ‘to blow’. Such ‘weather’ verbs are often considered to have zero valency, which in German is characterised by an obligatory es pronoun (2.2 a). However, the same verb can just as well be used as an intransitive (2.2 b,c), as a transitive with an accusative object (2.2 d), or even as a ditransitive with a dative and accusative object (2.2 e). Note that the prepositional phrase in (2.2 c,d,e) cannot be left out, and its obligatory presence might be used to argue for argument-status of these prepositional phrases. The example in (2.2 e) then will be an example of the verb wehen with a valency of four.

[2.8] There is a recurrent tendency in the literature to try and reduce such variation to a single valency per verb (viz. its ‘real’ or ‘underlying’ valency), and various strategies are employed to arrive at such a prototypical valency (see e.g. Welke 2011: Ch. 9 for a survey). That will not be the approach taken here. Instead, valency is proposed to be a characteristic of a specific utterance, not of a specific verb. So, the examples in (2.2) can simple be assigned an utterance valency from zero (2.2 a) to four (2.2 e) even though they all use the same lexeme wehen as their main verb.

[2.9] As a replacement of the traditional lexeme-specific notion of valency (e.g. geben is ditransitive), I propose to use the notion of lexeme-specific lexical roles (e.g. geben has lexical roles ‘giver’, ‘givee’, ‘given object’, etc.). Lexical roles are participants that are treated as an argument of utterance valency in at least one of the possible diatheses of a verb (see the next section for the complete definition of such arguments). Looking back at the examples in (2.2 e), the following lexical roles of wehen ‘to blow’ can be established:

1. blower: the blowing air, Fahrtwind ‘headwind’.
2. blowee: Object moved by the blowing air, Mütze ‘cap’.
3. blowing direction: Direction of movement induced by the blowing air, vom Kopf ‘off the head’.
4. blowing location possessor: Possessor of the locational object, in (2.2 e) the dative mir ‘my’. This role is necessarily the possessor of the location Kopf ‘head’ where the blowing is taking place.

[2.10] Additionally, it is of course possible to define a notion of lexeme valency, but this has to be a much more complex construct. For example, lexeme valency can be defined as the collection of all attested utterance valencies for a specific lexeme. To be precise, this lexeme valency also has to include an indexation of the lexical roles across all arguments. This addition is important to distinguish between, for example, the lexical valency of kochen ‘to cook’ (2.3) and essen ‘to eat’ (2.4). Both can occur with a transitive and intransitive utterance valency, but the lexical roles that can be used in the intransitive differ. Specifically, the patient-role ‘eaten object’ of essen cannot be used as nominative subject in the intransitive (2.4 c), which is different from kochen (2.3 c). In effect, these verbs have a different lexeme valency.

2.2.2 Arguments of utterance valency

[2.11] The lexical roles of a specific verb are defined as those participants that are treated as an argument in at least one of the possible utterance valencies of this verb. So, to identify lexical roles, a strict definition of the arguments of utterance valency is needed. The following kinds of arguments are identified. First, all case marked noun phrase constituents are arguments, with a few exceptions that will be discussed in Section 4.2. Basically, case marked arguments (2.5 a) can be questioned by question pronouns wer or was, including their case forms wem, wen and wessen (2.5 b,c). Further, they can be pronominalised by personal pronouns (2.5 d) or indefinite pronouns (irgend)jemand or (irgend)etwas (2.5 e).

[2.12] Second, prepositional phrases (2.6 a) are arguments of an utterance when they can be replaced by a complement clause of the form da(r)+preposition, dass … (2.6 b). All details of the difficult question when to treat such governed prepositional phrases as arguments are discussed in Section 5.2.

[2.13] Third, there exist obligatory prepositional phrases, though they are not very widespread in German and mostly designate a location. Some verbs always expect such a location-role, like sich befinden ‘to be located somewhere’ (2.7 a,b), see e.g. Section 5.3.4, Section 6.3.4, but more widespread are resultative diatheses that introduce an obligatory local role, like with brechen ‘to break’ (2.7 c,d), see e.g. Section 5.8.7. The example in (2.7 c) crucially shows that arguments should be determined as part of the clause structure, not the lexeme structure. It is perfectly possible to use the verb brechen without a prepositional phrase (2.7 e), but then there needs to be a different lexical role in the accusative.

[2.14] Finally, all complement clauses are arguments (2.8 a,b), see Chapter 15. Complement clauses can be questioned by was (2.8 c) and pronominalised by a definite pronoun es (2.8 d) or an indefinite pronoun (irgend)etwas (2.8 e). Complement clauses are thus syntactically highly similar to case marked noun phrases. Caution should be taken when interpreting pronominalised examples like (2.8 d,e), because it is not immediately obvious whether the pronouns are replacing a case-marked noun phrase or a complement clause. For example, with the verb hoffen (2.8 e) it is not possible to replace the pronoun es with a noun phrase, though a governed prepositional phrase with auf is possible (2.8 f).

2.2.3 es Arguments

[2.15] A further kind of utterance-valency argument can be instantiated by es, the 3rd person nominative/accusative pronoun in the neuter gender. There are various uses of this pronoun that have to be distinguished. The most obvious use the pronouns es is for anaphoric reference (phoric es). However, the next two uses not have argument-status (viz. correlative and position-simulating es). Most interestingly in the current context, the fourth usage of es does not have anaphoric reference, but will still be counted as an argument (viz. valency-simulating es).

[2.16] First, es can be used for anaphoric reference to neuter nouns, as shown in (2.9). There are various other variants of such phoric usage, for example it also occurs without direct gender agreement (Czicza 2014: Ch. 2).

[2.17] Second, another kind of referential es occurs with some non-finite complement clauses. By definition, a complement clause replaces an argument (2.10 a), but in some cases a pronoun es remains in place of the original argument, side by side with the complement clause (2.10 b). This is known as a correlative es (Czicza 2014: 79ff.).

[2.18] Third, the pronoun es is also used to fill the first sentence position in front of the finite verb (‘Vorfeld’ in German grammatical terminology), because there is a strong regularity in German that this position cannot be left empty (except in imperatives and in yes/no questions). Word order is rather flexible in German, and it is often possible to have no lexical content in the Vorfeld. In such sentences, the pronoun es has to be used to fill the Vorfeld, as shown in (2.11 b). This is known as a position-simulating es (Czicza 2014: 115).

[2.19] Finally, there are also constructions that obligatorily include the pronoun es in the sentence as part of the valency of the utterance. The main reason for such an es is that there is a strong regularity in German that a nominative subject has to be present in each sentence (with very few exceptions, see below). Note that ‘subject’ is defined here for German as the nominative noun phrase that shows agreement with the finite verb. When there is no subject available, then the pronoun es is used to fill this gap. This is known as a valency-simulating es (Czicza 2014: 115). In the analysis of diatheses in this book, such valency-simulating es is not alway explicitly noted. Any clause without an nominative argument induces a valency-simulating es (with very few exceptions, as noted below).

[2.20] In constructions with a valency-simulating es, as exemplified in (2.12 a,b), the pronoun es can occur in the Vorfeld (2.12 a), seemingly parallel to the position-simulating usage (2.11 a). However, when another constituent is placed in the Vorfeld, this obligatory es in (2.12 a) cannot be removed, but has to occur elsewhere in the sentence, typically immediately after the finite verb (2.12 b).

[2.21] In a very limited set of constructions, a valency-simulating es is left out, resulting in sentences without any formal nominative subject (2.13). Most of these cases are historical idiosyncrasies, except for the impersonal passive (2.13 d), see Section 9.5.1.

[2.22] There are also a few rare cases in which there is a valency-simulating es in what appears to be an accusative case (2.14).

2.2.4 Adjuncts

[2.23] Adjuncts, the counterparts of arguments, are phrases that are not specifically induced by the main verb of a clause. Typically, such adjuncts are adverbial prepositional phrases, see Section 5.2.2. Just like with arguments, adjunct status should not be linked to a lexical verb itself, but to the clause construction in which it is used. For example, the verb tanzen ‘to dance’ is typically considered to be an intransitive verb with optional (adjunct) locational prepositional phrases (2.15 a,b). However, there is a crucial difference between the two locations in these two examples, see Section 5.8.2. The static location im Saal ‘in the hall’ (2.15 a) remains optional in the perfect (with auxiliary haben), see (2.15 c,d), while the dynamic location in den Saal ‘into the hall’ becomes obligatory in the perfect (with auxiliary sein), see (2.15 e,f). So, the obligatory location in (2.15 e) is an utterance argument (and as a consequence, the role of ‘path’ is a lexical role of such verbs of movement like tanzen).

[2.24] Adjuncts are, by definition, optionally present, so there is a natural connection to zero expression. A central problem here is whether there is a crucial distinction between constructions in which a participant is obligatorily absent (i.e. impossible to express) vs. optionally absent (i.e. possibly not expressed). In most diatheses that involve absence, the whole point is that there is an alternation between absence and presence of a lexical role (e.g. in all drop and addition diatheses). The problematic cases are differences like passive vs. anticausative, which by definition are distinguished by possibility vs. impossibility for the agent to be expressed. This difference is highly volatile (i.e. it often differs from lexeme to lexeme whether it is possible or just dispreferred for an agent to be expressed).

2.3 Voice

[2.25] The formal linguistic marking of a diathesis, for example by verbal morphology or auxiliaries, is called grammatical voice (following Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019: 4). The different kinds of grammatical voice in German are the basic organisational framework of this book. Each chapter discusses a specific kind of grammatical voice, listing all diatheses using that marking. The nine main chapters can be grouped into four kinds of grammatical voices:

• zero-marked ‘covert’ diatheses (Chapters 4-5)
• diatheses marked by reflexive pronouns (Chapter 6)
• diatheses marked by adverbials or preverbs (Chapters 7-8)
• diatheses marked by light-verb constructions (Chapters 9-12)

[2.26] The first two chapters deal with diatheses that are not overtly marked as such, i.e. they deal with ‘covert’ diatheses. Because there is no marking on either of the two alternants, it is often difficult to discern a direction in such equipollent alternations. In Chapter 4 I will discuss diatheses that only differ in the marking of case, for example unmarked anticausatives like (2.16). Chapter 5 deals with unmarked diatheses in which at least on of the alternants is a prepositional phrase, for example unmarked antipassive like (2.17).

[2.27] The contribution of reflexive pronouns for the marking of diathesis is discussed in Chapter 6. A central claim in this chapter is that ‘self inflicting’ reflexive reference (2.18) does not count as diathesis in German. In contrast, there are various constructions in German that use reflexive pronouns without such ‘self inflicting’ reflexive reference, like the antipassive in (2.19). In such diatheses the presence of a reflexive pronoun is the actual marking of the diathesis, it is not signalling that subject and object are the same participant. An important generalisation about diatheses with reflexive pronouns is that they are always demotions.

[2.28] In Chapter 7 I will turn to preverbs, i.e. verbal prefixes that in German grammar are known as Verbpräfixe and Verbpartikeln. Grammatically, these are different kinds of prefixes, but from the perspective of diathesis they appear to function rather similar. The most widespread diathesis marked by such preverbs is an applicative, like with be- in (2.20). Because of the bound morphological structure, these diathesis show a strong tendency to grammaticalise into a large variety of different kinds of diatheses. A central generalisation of the diatheses discussed in this chapter is that the resulting sentence structures after diathesis are mostly transitive (esp. nominative + accusative).

[2.29] Closely related to preverbs are resultative adverbials that induce diathesis, like the applicative with leer in (2.21). Also using adverbials, but of a completely different kind, are diatheses with depictive adverbials, like the anticausative with gut in (2.22). Although these two kinds of adverbials occur in rather different kinds of diathesis, both phenomena are combined into the same chapter on adverbially marked diatheses in Chapter 8.

[2.30] A large group of diatheses uses light verbs in combination with a non-finite form of the lexical verb. A somewhat surprising insight resulting is that light-verb diatheses always involve a role-change of the nominative subject. I distinguish four different kinds of light verb constructions, to be discussed in four different chapters. Chapter 9 discusses light verb construction with participles, like the infamous werden passive (2.23).

[2.31] The next three chapters describe different combinations of light verbs with lexical verbs in the infinitive. Chapter 10 discusses light verbs with straight infinitives, like the lassen causative (2.24).

[2.32] Chapter 11 investigates light verbs with zu plus infinitive, like the sein anticausative (2.25). And finally, Chapter 12 looks at the combinations with zum plus infinitive, like the bringen causative (2.26).

2.4 Diathetical operations

2.4.1 Abbreviations used

[2.33] A diathetical operation is change that happens in the marking of the participants in a diathesis. One of the central definitional properties of a diathesis is that the coding of at least one of the participants has to change, for example a participant erstwhile coded with an accusative turns into a prepositional phrase. Because the role of the participant remains the same (again, by definition), such a change amounts to the mapping of a role onto a different grammatical form. I will call this process role-remapping.

[2.34] In the analysis of diathetical operations in this book I will use the following abbreviations, as summarised in Figure 2.1. First, grammatical expressions, i.e. actual grammatical forms as identified in traditional German grammar, are abbreviated with single letters, shown at the right side of the figure. For case-marked noun phrases I will use the easily recognizable capital letters ‘NADG’ for nominative, accusative, dative and genitive respectively. As argued earlier (see Section 2.2.2) there are also prepositional phrases that express lexically-determined roles. These will also be abbreviated with capital letters: ‘L’ for obligatory locations and ‘P’ for governed prepositional phrases.

[2.35] Lower-cased letters are used for non-argument participants in the clause: ‘p’ for non-governed prepositional phrases and ‘g’ for adnominal genitives. Adnominal genitives become relevant because in some diatheses a newly introduced participant is inherently the possessor of another participant (see paragraph 2.124). Absence of a specific role will be indicated by a ‘–’ dash. Lower-cased ‘a’ and ‘d’ are only used in Section 6.4 to indicate accusative and dative reflexive pronouns in referential usage. As described in much detail in that chapter, it is important to distinguish between reflexive pronouns in German that refer to a lexical role (i.e. ‘referential’ or ‘real’ reflexive constructions) and reflexive pronouns that mark a diathesis without referring to a separate role themselves. Those latter reflexive pronouns, that are not marking any role, are not abbreviated by lowercased ‘a’ or ‘d’.

[2.36] Besides single-letter abbreviations I will also use capitalised three-letter abbreviations for a more abstract level of analysis. As summarised at the left side of Figure 2.1, the grammatical expressions are grouped into sets of grammatical macroroles, mostly along familiar lines. This grouping is not necessarily the best or most optimal grouping, but this grouping has emerged to be useful to organise the large diversity of diatheses in this book. The notion subject (sbj) is used for governed nominative phrases that show agreement with the finite verb.⁷ The other case-marked governed phrases are combined as cased objects (obj). The cased objects together with the prepositional objects (pbj) form a superclass of objects. Non-governed phrases are separated in overtly expressed adjuncts (adj) and unexpressed roles zero (ø). Although I will use this five-way distinction throughout this book (sbj, obj, pbj, adj, ø), the five steps are not equidistant. The macro-roles obj and pbj are rather closely related, and likewise are adj and ø intimately linked. Collapsing these pairs results in the traditional subject-object-adjunct distinction.

[2.37] There are some indications that the group of cased objects (obj) might be fruitfully separated into core (accusative) and non-core (dative/genitive). This would simplify the analysis of, for example, case change in object chains (Section 2.7.5), the antipassive hierarchy (Section 5.7) and the case-marking of the reflexive pronoun (Section 6.3). However, in the majority of diatheses all three cases seem to behave as a uniform group, so I did not consistently pursue this separation.

[2.38] It is imperative to realise that the macroroles are defined in a language-specific way for German grammar as groupings of language-specific German expressions (e.g. adj is defined as being either a non-governed prepositional phrase or an adnominal genitive). The names that are used (e.g. ‘object’ or ‘adjunct’) deliberately conjure up general cross-linguistic associations, but it remains to be seen whether similar definitions as used here are also useful for other languages. I will refrain from any cross-linguistic speculation in this context here.

2.4.2 Remapping of roles

[2.39] Using the abbreviations as summarised in Figure 2.1 I will organise and categorise the role-remapping of all diatheses in various levels of abstraction. These different categorisations inform the practical organisation of each chapter.

[2.40] level 1: diathesis. Each diathesis is summarised in its own sub-subsection. The establishment of an individual diathesis is not always obvious, and each diathesis in this book is already an conscious categorisation (which could be wrong). It has actually been a voyage of discovery in the preparation of this book to decide when to consider a set of examples to be a single diathesis. Very often erstwhile single diatheses turned out to be better analysed by a split into various different diatheses. Although I am rather confident in the quality of the current decisions, I expect that further refinements are necessary in the future.

[2.41] level 2: remapping pattern. The role-remapping of each diathesis is analysed using the single-letter abbreviations (NADGPLpgad–) from Figure 2.1. A remapping is specified as an ordered listing of grammatical expressions for roles, both before and after the diathesis. For example, [na | –n] is a diathesis that involves two roles that are marked ‘NA’ before the diathesis and ‘–N’ after the diathesis. Because there are many diatheses with this same pattern, this characterisation is already an (implicit) classification.

[2.42] level 3: local group. Groups of diatheses with similar semantics within each chapter are grouped together as a local group. These groups are rather ad-hoc and mainly represent a convenience-summary to streamline the presentation. Local groups are unnumbered subsections, indicated graphically with dashes around the name of the local group.

[2.43] level 4: macrorole pattern. The remapping of each local group is structurally analysed in terms of the three-letter macroroles (sbj, obj, pbj, adj, ø) from Figure 2.1. For example, the remapping from above [na | –n] includes both a change from N to zero (i.e. sbj › ø) and a change from A to N (i.e. obj › sbj). These two macrorole changes can be combined into a single macrorole patter [obj › sbj › ø].

[2.44] level 5: promotion/demotion. On the most abstract level, all diatheses are separated into chapter-subsections of either demotion or promotion (with only very few diatheses being symmetrical exchanges). Basically, each remapping is evaluated on the macrorole hierarchy (2.27) with role-remapping upwards being promotion and role-remapping downward being demotion. Note that there is a crucial additional criterion necessary, because the majority of diatheses consist of chains of two coinciding remappings (see Section 2.6 on the notion of ‘chains’). In such remappings, the largest jump on the macrorole hierarchy defines a diathesis as being demotion or promotion. When both jumps are equally large, then the diathesis is symmetrical.

[2.45] For example, the diathesis in (2.28) will be analysed as a remapping pattern [na | –n], see Section 6.5.2. This should be read as follows: there is an alternation between a clause with ‘NA’ arguments (nominative, accusative) and a clause with only ‘N’ marking (nominative). The relative order of these letters is crucial, as the order of the roles remains fixed in this notation, e.g. the second letter on the left ‘A’ (accusative) corresponds to the second letter on the right ‘N’ (nominative). The ‘–’ dash on the right indicates that the corresponding ‘N’ on the left is not expressed. Note that the actual linear arrangement of the letters is flexible, as long as both sides of the alternation remain in the same order, i.e. [an | n–] would be the same remapping pattern as [na | –n]. The pattern [na | –n] is an implicit categorisation, because there are many other diatheses that have exactly the same pattern (see e.g. Sections 4.5.5, 8.5.2, 9.5.15).

[2.46] Although there is a reflexive pronoun in (2.28 b), this pronoun is not included with a lower-cased ‘a’ in the remapping pattern [na | –n], because this reflexive pronoun does not refer to a separate role. The verb schließen ‘to close’ implies at least two different roles, the ‘closer’ and the ‘closed object’, expressed as nominative and accusative in (2.28 a), respectively. In (2.28 b) only the role of ‘closed object’ is expressed as nominative. The reflexive pronoun does not refer to any other role.

[2.47] I interpret the reflexive pronoun in (2.28) as a marker of the diathesis itself (see Chapter 6 for an extensive discussion), so there is an overt direction in the markedness from (2.28 a) to (2.28 b). The vertical bar ‘ | ’ in the middle of the remapping pattern [na | –n] implies this direction in markedness, i.e. left side describes the unmarked alternant and the right the marked alternant. Reordering the remapping pattern would result in a completely reversed diathesis [–n | na].

[2.48] The diathesis in (2.28) is one of various examples of a local group called ‘reflexive antipassive’. Other diatheses in this group include examples like (2.29) with an additional governed preposition, analysed with the remapping pattern [nap | –np], see Section 6.5.4. All diatheses in this local group have the same macrorole pattern, namely [obj › sbj › ø], i.e a cased object is turned into nominative subject, which is turned into zero (i.e. unexpressed).

[2.49] This diathesis is a combination of two different remappings [obj › sbj] and [sbj › ø], with the first being a promotion on the macrorole hierarchy and the second a demotion. However, because the second remapping [sbj › ø] is a larger jump on the hierarchy, the complete combination is categorised as a demotion.

[2.50] So, in summary, the role-remapping in the diathesis (2.29) is categorised as:

1. diathesis: reflexive antipassive + governed preposition
2. remapping pattern: [nap | –np]
3. local group: reflexive antipassive
4. macrorole pattern: [obj › sbj › ø]
5. promotion/demotion: demotion

2.5 Stacking

2.5.1 Combining diatheses

[2.51] Different diatheses can be applied one after the other, forming stacks of diatheses. The term ‘stacking’ is introduced here explicitly in opposition to ‘subordinating’. Subordination (see Chapter 15) leads to non-coherent multi-clause constructions, while stacks always remain coherent and thus monoclausal.

[2.52] Stacked diatheses can lead to convoluted role-remappings. A beautiful example of such stacking of diatheses is given by Dixon (2014: 252) for the Amazonian language Paumarí. Here, the root noki- ‘to see’ is transparently related to the meaning ‘to show’ through a series of derivational diatheses, viz. noki- ‘to see’, noki-a- ‘to be visible’, na-noki-a- ‘to become visible’, and finally na-noki-a-hi- ‘to make become visible’ i.e. ‘to show’.

[2.53] German does not have that many morphologically bound mechanisms for diathesis, though there are incidental examples that come close. For example, the verb liegen ‘to lie’ changes with ablaut to legen ‘to lay’ (see Section 4.6.3), which in turn can take a preverb to form be-legen ‘to cover’ (see Section 7.9.3). However, when the perspective is broadened beyond bound morphology and all different kinds of German diatheses are considered, then it turns out that stacking of diatheses is extremely widespread.

[2.54] In many cases, the different steps in a stack can be easily disentangled by carefully observing the formal marking of the diathesis. For example, the construction in (2.30 c) includes both a preverb be- and a reflexive pronoun sich and it turns out that these are applied in turn to make a stack of two diatheses. Starting with the verb antworten ‘to answer’ with a governed preposition auf (2.30 a), the applicative preverb be- changes the prepositional phrase to an accusative (2.30 b), see Section 7.8.10. Subsequently, the reflexive anticausative turns the accusative into a nominative and drops the nominative agent (2.30 c), see Section 6.5.2.

[2.55] Diatheses are applied one after the other, i.e. the order of the diatheses in a stack is of crucial importance. Basically, a stack is just a list of clause altenations applied one after the other. Semantically this means that each subsequent clause alternation has scope over the previous one. This can for example be written down using a symbol like +> to indicate the additive (+) and sequential (>) nature of the combination. The stack above can then be analysed as: (2.30 c) = (2.30 a) +> be- applicative +> reflexive anticausative. This notation leads to concise analyses, as for example shown in (7.18) for the difference between (2.31 a) and (2.31 b).

[2.56] With unmarked (‘covert’) diatheses such stacks can sometimes be tricky to tease apart. As an example, consider the arguably somewhat artificially constructed example in (2.32) using the verb schneiden ‘to cut’. It starts off in (2.32 a) as a basic transitive construction with a nominative and accusative argument. Yet, after various twists and turns it ends up on (2.32 g) with a nominative, two accusatives, a dative and an obligatory locational prepositional phrase.

[2.57] Teasing this stack apart, there are six different diatheses, concurrently showing that the verb schneiden has at least six different lexeme-specific roles. As defined in Section 1.3.3, each role that appears as a case-marked constituent in at least one diathesis is a lexeme-specific role, and all of the following participants are case-marked in the stack of diatheses (2.32):

• the cutter Arzt ‘physician’
• the cut object Nagel ‘nail’
• the possessor of the cut object Patient ‘patient’
• the result of the cutting Schlitz ‘groove, slit’
• the instrument doing the cutting Fräser ‘milling cutter’
• the causer of cutting action Assistent ‘assistant’

[2.58] The six diatheses (and the corresponding role-remappings) are the following:

• (2.32 b), in antipassive: changing the cut object Nagel from accusative to prepositional object, see Section 5.7.6.4.
• (2.32 c), possessor raising: changing the possessor of the cut object Patient from adnominal genitive into dative, see Section 5.8.10.
• (2.32 d), resultative: adding a new accusative object Schlitz as the result of the cutting, see Section 5.8.7.
• (2.32 e), adjunct addition: adding an optional instrument Fräser, see Section 5.2.4.
• (2.32 f), instrument anticausative: turning the instrument Fräser from prepositional phrase to nominative, see Section 5.5.5.
• (2.32 g), lassen + Infinitiv causative: adding a new causer Assistent and demoting the nominative Fräser to accusative, see Section 10.6.2.

2.5.2 Fixed stacks

[2.59] There are a few examples of diatheses that look like stacks of two diatheses, but on closer inspection it turns out that the intermediate construction does not exist. A few major examples of such fixed stacks are exemplified below.

[2.60] There is an infamous anticausative diathesis that needs a reflexive pronoun, which is attested for a large, but restricted group of verbs like schließen ‘to close’ (2.33 a,b), see Section 6.5.2. A completely different group of verbs also has an anticausative diathesis with a reflexive pronoun, but only with an additional evaluative adverbial. This is for example attested with verkaufen ‘to sell’ (2.33 c,d), see Section 8.5.2. In this case, the diathesis is marked by both the reflexive pronoun and the presence of an adverbial, and neither is possible without the other. Such a combination of two obligatorily co-occurring formal marking strategies is called a fixed stack.

[2.61] Various diatheses between a bare verb, like fassen ‘to grasp’ (2.34 a), and a preverb-alternant, like befassen ‘to be concerned with’ (2.34 b), additionally need a reflexive pronoun, see Section 7.7.6. So here we have a fixed stack of a reflexive pronoun and a preverb together that mark the diathesis.

[2.62] Also some light verb alternations show fixed stacks. For example, there is a very widespread causative diathesis using the light verb lassen with an infinitive (2.35 b), see Section 10.6.2. Additionally, the combination of lassen + Infinitiv and a reflexive pronoun leads to an anticausative alternation (2.35 c), which does not make sense as being derived from the causative (2.35 b). It seems better to consider the combination of lassen + Infinitiv + Reflexiv as a fixed stack, see Section 10.5.3.

[2.63] Similarly, the alternation using the light verb gehen + zu + Infinitiv necessarily needs an additional evaluative adverb or negation (2.36), see Section 11.5.7. The light verb construction does not seem possible without the adverbial (2.36 c).

2.6 Chaining

2.6.1 Isolated diatheses

[2.64] Many diatheses just remap a single role. Such sole diatheses are called isolated diatheses here. However, there are also many diatheses in which more than one role is remapped. I distinguish the following kinds of role-remappings, of which only the first two are frequently attested.

• isolated diathesis: Only one role changes its formal marking.
• chained diathesis: Two roles change their formal marking, forming a chain in which one role changes its form from X to Y, while the other role changes its form from Y to Z. This results in a chain [x › y › z].
• multi-chained diathesis: More than two roles change their formal marking, forming a longer chain of connected changes.
• disjunct diathesis: Two (or more) roles change their formal marking, with no overlap between marking.

2.6.2 Chained diatheses

[2.65] When two roles are remapped by a single diathesis it is surprisingly frequent for them to be chained. In a chained diathesis the resulting form of one remapping is the start of the second. This can be conceptualised as a ‘push’ chain in which one remapping induces another because German grammar strongly disprefers multiple constituents of the same kind (e.g. two accusatives) in the same clause.

[2.66] Chained diatheses typically occur when the nominative subject is involved in the diathesis. There can only be a single nominative subject in a German clause, and it is highly unusual to have a sentence without a nominative subject. This implies that any diathesis involving the nominative subject typically includes two remappings, namely one from something else to nominative and a second remapping of the erstwhile nominative to something else.

[2.67] A prototypical example of a chained diathesis involving the nominative subject is the werden passive (2.37). Here, the erstwhile accusative Kuchen ‘cake’ is turned into a nominative, while the erstwhile nominative Lehrling ‘apprentice’ is removed (or optionally retained as a von prepositional phrase). So, we have a chain consisting of the role-remappings [obj › sbj] and [sbj › adj].

[2.68] Diatheses without involvement of the nominative subject are more flexible, in that both isolated and chained diatheses are common. A typical example of a chained diathesis is a full applicative induces by the preverb be- (2.38). In this example, a prepositional phrase für ihre Freundin ‘for her friend’ is remapped to an accusative [adj › obj] while the erstwhile accusative Essen ‘food’ is turned into a prepositional phrase [obj › adj].

[2.69] Among chained diatheses there is a group of frequently recurring remapping patterns. Because of their frequency, it is highly useful to give them specific names. Such names are widespread in the literature, e.g. anticausative for [obj › sbj › ø] or passive for [obj › sbj › adj]. A survey of the various names used in this book will be pursued in Section 2.7.

2.6.3 Multi-chained diatheses

[2.70] multi-chained diatheses consist of combinations of more than two role-remappings that occur in a sequence. This occurs frequently as the result of a stack of multiple diatheses, but only very rarely in a single diathesis. As an example arising from a stack of multiple diatheses consider taking a verb like lesen ‘to read’ (2.39 a) and applying a stack of two diatheses (2.39 b,c). This leads to a chain of three role-remappings. First, the preverb diathesis with vor- (2.39 b) leads to the addition of a dative argument dem Jungen, i.e. a role-remapping [ø › obj], see Section 7.8.6. On top of that, the bekommen dative passive (2.39 c) promotes this dative to subject and removes the original subject, i.e. a role-remapping [obj › sbj › ø], see Section 9.5.19. Combined, these two diatheses lead to a role-remapping [ø › obj › sbj › ø].

[2.71] Such multi-chained diatheses resulting from diathesis-stacking are widespread. However, I know of only two diatheses with a multi-chain that cannot be decomposed into a stack of separate diatheses. Both these ‘fixed’ multi-chain diatheses appear to occur with just a few idiosyncratic verbs, so this phenomenon really seems to be dispreferred in German.

[2.72] First, the preverb diathesis from erben ‘to inherit’ to enterben ‘to disinherit’ (2.40), see Section 7.6.9, contains three linked role-remappings for (i) the originator of the inheritance Vater ‘father’ [adj › sbj], (ii) the receiver of the inheritance Junge ‘boy’ [sbj › obj] and (iii) the inheritance Schreibtisch ‘desk’ [obj › ø].

[2.73] Second, the verb schmecken ‘to taste’ (2.41), see Section 5.5.6, allows for two different constructions with three linked role-remappings for (i) the tasted substance Pfefferminze ‘peppermint’ [obj › adj], (ii) the tasted dish Suppe ‘soup’ [adj › sbj] and (iii) the taster Koch ‘cook’ [sbj › ø].

2.6.4 Disjunct diatheses

[2.74] disjunct diatheses consist of a combination of multiple role-remappings that are not linked to each other. Just as with the multi-chained diatheses from the previous section, disjunct diatheses regularly occur as the result of stacking of diatheses. In contrast, they are very rare in individual diatheses.

[2.75] When multiple diatheses are stacked, i.e. whey they are applied sequentially on top of each other, they are often structurally independent. For example, the verb waschen ‘to wash’ (2.42 a) can be used in a resultative construction (2.42 b) in which the role of washee Hemd ‘shirt’ is turned from an accusative into a location [obj › pbj] and a new accusative object is introduced for the role of the result Fleck ‘stain’ [ø › obj], see Section 5.8.7. Independent of this chained diathesis, the possessor of the object Nachbar ‘neighbour’ can be raised to genitive (2.42 c), see Section 5.8.11.

[2.76] There are only a few incidental examples of such disjunct diatheses without stacking. The following four examples all only occur with a very limited number of verbs. First, the verb deuten can be used both the mean ‘interpret’ (2.43 a) and ‘forebode’ (2.43 b) with a rather transparent connection between the two. However, the role-remappings are quite complex, see Section 5.5.11.

[2.77] Second, some preverbs lead to disjunct diatheses, like with schweigen ‘to remain silent’ and verschweigen ‘to conceal’ (2.44), see Section 7.8.14.

[2.78] Further examples are resultatives for a few verbs of naming like schimpfen ‘to scold’ (2.45), see Section 5.8.8. The disjunct diathesis in (2.46) is less clear, as it might be better analysed as a stack, see Section 5.5.3.

[2.79] The only somewhat more widespread disjunct diathesis is the resultative construction that can arise with some apparently intransitive verbs like schwitzen ‘to sweat’ (2.47). This diathesis introduces two roles at once: a result Fleck ‘stain’ and an obligatory location Hemd ‘shirt’, see Section 5.8.4.

2.7 Naming

2.7.1 Names for macrorole patterns

[2.80] Throughout the introductory chapters, I have used various names for diatheses, like passive, antipassive, applicative or causative. These names have a long history in the typological grammatical literature (cf. Mel’čuk 1993; Wunderlich 1993; Wunderlich 2015; Dixon & Aikhenvald 2000; Dixon 2014; Haspelmath & Müller-Bardey 2004; Kulikov 2011; Malchukov 2015: 96ff.; Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019). Although I have been using these terms as if their meaning is clear, this is often far from the case. Many different terms and definitions have been proposed in the literature, and different terms have at times been used for the same phenomena. For example, the original proposal for the term ‘antipassive’ is already 50 years old (Silverstein 1972: 395), but the same phenomenon is also known as deaccusative (Geniušė 1987: 94) or antiapplicative (Haspelmath & Müller-Bardey 2004: 1132; Scheibl 2006: 371). Reversely, antipassive is also attested referring to a slightly different phenomenon of the drop of an object (Scheibl 2006: 372-373).

[2.81] In this section I will describe in more detail how these names are used and defined in the current book about German diatheses. The names for diatheses will here always refer to a macrorole pattern, i.e. to the highly abstract classification of a diathesis in terms of sbj, obj, etc. as defined in Section 2.4.2. For example, the term ‘anticausative’ will be used as a name for the macrorole pattern [obj › sbj › ø]. Such macrorole patterns are strictly defined here in a language-specific way for German, so care should be taken when applying the same names to different languages.

[2.82] One widespread term that I will avoid is the term ‘middle’ (and likewise the Latinate equivalent term ‘medium’). This term for a diathesis is already attested as μεσότης in the oldest known Greek grammatical text, the τέχνη γραμματική of Dionysius Thrax, and it has become a mainstay in the grammatical literature ever since.⁸ The phenomena that are called ‘middle’ in the literature are highly variable, and there is no consensus about what kind of diathesis this term is supposed to designate, other than something that is neither active nor passive (see Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019: 168-177 for a thorough summary of the complex philological history of the term middle/medium). Such a broad and ill-defined term is not useful for a detailed analysis of the large variety of attested role-remappings in German.

[2.83] The discussion about the different names for macrorole patterns will be split into four parts. First, the following two sections will present names for diatheses involving the nominative subject. Subsequent sections will discuss diatheses not involving the subject. In both discussions, a central distinction will be made between isolated diatheses and chained diatheses (see Section 2.6).

2.7.2 Isolated subject diatheses

[2.84] Isolated diatheses that involve a nominative subject are not widespread in German. The only clearly attested kind is the drop of the subject [sbj › ø], i.e. the complete removal of the role marked as nominative subject without any further accompanying role-remapping or reintroduction of a new subject. This is typically attested with intransitive verbs: after removing the single available role, there is no other role introduced to fill the structural subject position. Semantically, such diatheses put the focus on the activity as described by the verb itself, so I propose to call them verbative diatheses. Note that there is a strong tendency for every German sentence to formally have a nominative subject with verb agreement. Consequently, such verbative diatheses almost always result in the presence of a valency-simulating nominative pronoun es (see Section 2.2.3).

[2.85] A verbative diathesis is attested with verbs like stinken ‘to stink’ (2.48), see Section 4.5.1. In a sentence like es stinkt the pronoun es can of course simply be an anaphor, like in (2.48 b). In such a sentence, the role of ‘stinker’ is still present and there is no diathesis at all. However, in other contexts (2.48 c) the verb stinken is used without implied subject. This is typically attested in contexts in which some odour is attested, but the originator is not known.

[2.86] Another example of a verbative diathesis is illustrated with the verb leben ‘to live’ (2.49). Many sich intransitive verbs can be used without a subject in a habitual sense, but this is only possible with an obligatory adverbial qualification like gut (2.49 b,c), see Section 8.5.1.

[2.87] Also the so-called impersonal passive consisting of werden + Partizip (2.50) is an example of a verbative diathesis, in this case even without any valency-simulating es, see Section 9.5.1.

[2.88] A different kind of isolated subject diathesis is subject demotion of the nominative subject to a prepositional phrase. An example is the geben + zu + Infinitiv (2.51), see Section 11.5.4. In this diathesis, the subject is demoted to an optional non-governed prepositional phrase [sbj › adj].

[2.89] Most isolated diatheses are only attested in incidental examples in German, like a subject demotion to a governed preposition [sbj › pbj] with fehlen shown in (2.52), see Section 5.5.2.

[2.90] Isolated subject addition [ø › sbj] is very rare in German, partly because it would need an unmarked construction without any subject to start off with. A possible example is the addition of a subject that seems possible with some weather verbs like donnern ‘to thunder’ (2.53), see Section 4.6.1.

2.7.3 Chained subject diatheses

[2.91] Chained diatheses that involve the nominative subject are widespread in German (in contrast to the infrequent occurrence of isolated diatheses as discussed previously). Figure 2.2 presents an overview of the different terms that I will use for these diatheses. The bold-faced terms are used for widely attested diatheses, while the other kinds of diatheses are only incidentally found. There is currently no evidence in German for the remappings that are left empty in the figure. There appears to be a preference for various kinds of demotion (i.e. the upper right corner of the figure), which fits nicely with the known typological preference of German for anticausative constructions (Haspelmath 1993: 101; Nichols, Peterson & Barnes 2004: 189).

[2.92] The upper right triangle of Figure 2.2 are demotions, the lower left triangle are promotions, and the diagonal are examples of symmetrical diatheses. I will discuss all types in this order.

Demotions

[2.93] The most extreme kind of demotion is an anticausative [obj › sbj › ø]. The typical characteristic of an anticausative is the complete removal of the nominative subject that is the causer of the action/state of the clause. Filling the syntactic gap, a case-marked argument (typically the accusative) is promoted to subject. This is a widespread kind of diathesis. An example is the reflexive anticausative with verb like schliessen ‘to close’ (2.54), see Section 6.5.2.

[2.94] Very similar an anticausative is the passive [obj › sbj › adj]. The main difference between the two (a distinction which is often difficult to delimit) is that for a passive the original subject is still implied and can optionally be overtly expressed (2.55). In contrast, for an anticausative the original subject is completely removed and a phrase like “by itself” can typically be added. As an example of a passive diathesis in (2.55) is the bekommen Rezipientenpassiv in which a dative is promoted to subject Section 9.5.19

[2.95] A conversive [obj › sbj › pbj] looks similar to a passive, except that the prepositional phrase is a lexically governed preposition, so it has a more object-like grammatical status. An example is the verb empören ‘to appall’ (2.56 a) with the reflexive diathesis sich empören über ‘to be outraged about’ (2.56 b,c), see Section 6.5.8. The term conversive is adapted from Kulikov (2011: 380).

[2.96] For the next diathesis, I propose the term fabricative [pbj › sbj › ø] based on Lat. fabrica ‘plan, trick, workmanship’. This term is used for a diathesis in German in which a fabricated product can be expressed either as a governed prepositional phrase or as a nominative subject. This diathesis occurs for example with various verbs of emotional interactions like überraschen ‘to surprise’ (2.57 a), see Section 5.5.7. To understand this diathesis, a distinction is needed between the role of the ‘fabricator’ (here: Lehrer, ‘teacher’) and the role of the ‘fabricated product’, which induces the emotion (here: Aufgabe, ‘assignment’). The mit prepositional phrase that expresses the fabricated product in (2.57 a) is a governed preposition (2.57 c). The diathesis promotes this fabricated product to nominative subject and the fabricator is removed from the expression (2.57 b). The experiencer in the accusative mich remains unchanged.

[2.97] A similar kind of diathesis is called here a conciliative [adj › sbj › ø] based on Lat. conciliator ‘intermediary, mediator’. In a conciliative an external object (typically an instrument) is promoted to subject (2.58), see Section 5.5.5. The conciliative and fabricative in German both regularly use a prepositional phrase with mit, but the grammatical status is clearly different. The mit phrase in a conciliative is an optional adjunct (2.58), while the mit phrase in a fabricative is a governed preposition (2.57). This grammatical difference is paralleled by a functional difference in the role that is promoted to subject: a conciliative concerns a (typically tangible) instrument that is used by an agent, while a fabricative promotes a (typically intangible) creation that is produced by the agent.

Promotions

[2.98] The most widespread promotion to subject attested in German is the diathesis with role-remapping [ø › sbj › obj], called novative here (based on Lat. novare ‘renew, refresh, change’). This role-remapping is best known as ‘causative’, but this semantic characterisation does not hold for all examples of this diathesis. Various other novative diatheses exist in which the new nominative is not a causer but an experiencer, opionator or a permission giver.

[2.99] Semantically, the most widespread kind of novative adds a new causer to the construction, like with the diatheses between brennen ‘to burn (intransitive)’ and verbrennen ‘to burn (transitive)’ (2.59), see Section 7.6.1. Such a diathesis is aptly called a causative.

[2.100] The sehen + Infinitiv diathesis (2.60), see Section 10.6.6, adds a new nominative subject and the old nominative is turned into an accusative. This diathesis is thus structurally an example of a novative [ø › sbj › obj]. However, the newly added nominative is not a causer. The new role is better described as an experiencer, so this diathesis can semantically be called an experientive. Similarly constructions are also attested with light-verbs hören, fühlen, and spüren.

[2.101] The glauben + Partizip diathesis (2.61), see Section 9.6.2 similarly adds a new nominative subject while the old nominative is turned into an accusative. The role of the new nominative is best characterised as somebody having an opinion, so this diathesis can semantically be called an opiniative. The main verb is typically a patientive intransitive predicate like einschlafen, ‘to fall asleep’, see Section 9.2.6. Similar constructions also exist with light-verbs wissen, sehen and finden.

[2.102] Likewise, the lassen + Infinitiv diathesis (2.62), see Section 10.6.2 is also structurally a novative [ø › sbj › obj]. This diathesis has multiple possible interpretations, among them also a causative reading (2.62). However, in the example in (2.63) the newly added nominative is allowing the action to happen, not causing it, so this diathesis can semantically be called a permissive. This second interpretation typically happens with agentive intransitive predicates like schlafen ‘to sleep’, see Section 9.2.6.

[2.103] Finally, the lehren/helfen + Infinitiv diathesis (2.64), see Section 10.6.12, is a novative in which the role of the new subject is more of an assistant than a real causative. Therefor it is called here an assistive novative. Note that both lehren and helfen can also be used with zu + Infinitiv, but then the constructions are not coherent, so those constructions are not included among the diatheses.

[2.104] All other promotions are rare. A reversed passive [adj › sbj › obj] demotes the subject to object and at the same time promotes a new subject from an erstwhile adjunct role. An example in German is the diathesis from erben ‘to inherit’ to enterben ‘to disinherit’ (2.65 a,b), see Section 7.6.9. This is semantically very close to a causative [ø › sbj › obj], in which the newly introduced causer can sometimes be expressed as an adjunct (2.65 c,d). This affinity between a reversed passive and a causative is reminiscent of the affinity between a passive and an anticausative. In both pairs, the difference amounts to a switch between the closely related macro-role of an optional adjunct (adj) and being completely unexpressed (ø).

[2.105] A reversed conversive [pbj › sbj › obj] differs from a reversed passive in that the prepositional phrase is a lexically governed preposition, as can be identified by a possible da+preposition, dass … paraphrase. This is for example attested for the diatheses between staunen über ‘to marvel’ and erstaunen ‘to amaze’ (2.66), see Section 7.6.10.

[2.106] The novative with extended demotion [ø › sbj › pbj] is extremely rare in German. The name is adapted from Kulikov (2011: 388). The diathesis between freuen ‘to be pleased’ and erfreuen ‘to please’ (2.67) might be an example, see Section 7.6.8.

[2.107] Finally, a novative with extreme demotion [ø › sbj › adj] almost completely removes the erstwhile subject. This is attested in an interesting group of constructions using light verbs like finden with a participle and a transitive main verb like aufheben ‘to preserve’ (2.68), see Section 9.6.8. With this diathesis, there is a new opiniator introduced, just like with the opiniative above (see paragraph 2.101). However, the erstwhile nominative subject is now demoted to an optional prepositional phrase.

Symmetrical subject diatheses

[2.108] Completely symmetrical diatheses involving the subject are rare in German. An inversive [obj › sbj › obj] is a diathesis that switches subject and object. This term is proposed by Malchukov (2015: 99-100) in reminiscence of the so-called ‘inverse’ marking found in Algonquian languages. An inversive diathesis is designated as a “symmetric conversive” by Kulikov (2011: 380). An example of an inversive is the diathesis between wundern ‘to puzzle’ and bewundern ‘to admire’ (2.69), see Section 7.9.1.

[2.109] Much more widespread in German are diatheses in which a nominative/accusative construction is inverted into a dative/nominative construction. This is for example attested for the bleiben + zu + Infinitiv diathesis (2.70), see Section 11.9.1. Because dative and accusative are both classified here as obj, this counts as an inversive diathesis. However, when a separation between core (accusative) and non-core (dative/genitive) case would be pursued (see paragraph 2.37), then this diathesis would be an example of demotion. There are two remappings, namely down from sbj to non-core obj and up from core obj to sbj. When non-core is taken as being lower on the macrorole hierarchy (2.27) then the biggest jump is the jump down, which is the definition of demotion (see Section 2.4.2). Instead of adding a completely new set of categories I propose to simply split inversive and call this phenomenon demoted inversive.

[2.110] The opposite promoted inversive promotes a dative/genitive into a nominative subject, and demotes the erstwhile nominative to an accusative. This is illustrated with the haben + Infinitiv diathesis in (2.71), see Section 10.9.2.

[2.111] At the other extreme, a commutative [ø › sbj › ø] complete removes the old subject and introduces a completely new role as subject. I propose this term on the basis of Lat. commutare ‘exchange, replace’. A German example of such a diathesis is the geben + Partizip construction (2.101), see Section 9.9.4

[2.112] The two other symmetrical diatheses in between the two extremes are even rarer. A preposition inversive [pbj › sbj › pbj] is similar to an inversive, but the exchange is with a governed preposition. This is arguably attested in the diathesis between strahlen ‘to shine’ and erstrahlen ‘to gleam’ (8.22), see Section 7.9.2.

[2.113] Finally, an example of an adjunct commutative [adj › sbj › adj] is possibly attested with the verb wimmeln ‘to swarm’ (2.74), see Section 5.9.1.

2.7.4 Isolated object diatheses

[2.114] The situation with object diatheses is reversed from the previously discussed subject diatheses. With object diatheses, isolated diatheses are much more widespread and they occur with a wide variety of role-remappings, see Figure 2.3. In contrast, chained diatheses are less widespread and can mostly be analysed as a combination of multiple isolated diatheses.

[2.115] The top left diatheses in Figure 2.3 are demotions, while the bottom left ones are promotions. The bottom right is completely empty because these remappings are not diatheses anymore, but simply optional marking. There is a strong tendency for object demotions to be either unmarked or marked by reflexive pronouns in German, while the object promotions are typically marked by preverbs or obligatory adverbs. The exception to this generalisation are the so-called locative and delocative diatheses. With those, promotions (locatives) are formally unmarked, while demotions (delocatives) are marked by preverbs or obligatory adverbs. I have currently no explanation for this rather clear markedness pattern.

[2.116] I will discuss the different role-remappings from Figure 2.3 in four subsections. First, I will look at the various kinds of applicatives and antipassives (mid left and mid top), then at the objectives and deobjectives (top right and left bottom), followed by locative and delocative diatheses (mid bottom and mid right), and finally at the symmetrical exchanges (on the diagonal).

Applicatives & antipassives

[2.117] Applicatives and antipassives are very similar, though reversed. applicatives [adj › obj] change a prepositional phrase into a case-marked phrase, while antipassives [obj › adj] convert a case-marked phrase into a prepositional phrase. Given this affinity, instead of ‘antipassive’ it might be better to call such remappings ‘antiapplicative’ (e.g. Haspelmath & Müller-Bardey 2004: 1132). However, because the name ‘antipassive’ is already strongly entrenched in the grammatical literature, I decided not to add to the naming-confusion any more.

[2.118] Applicatives occur frequently with the addition of a preverb, like in the alternation between steigen auf ‘to climb’ and besteigen ‘to mount’ (2.75), see Section 7.8.10.

[2.119] Antipassives in German are often unmarked (see further below), but an example of an antipassive with a clear direction is the alternation between treffen ‘to meet’ and reflexive sich treffen mit ’to meet with (2.76), see Section 6.7.4.

[2.120] The object of applicatives and antipassives is typically an accusative, but datives are also attested. An example of a dative applicative is the alternation between stammen aus ‘to hail from’ and entstammen ‘to be descended from’ (2.77), see Section 7.8.16. An example of a dative antipassive is the covert alternation of berichten ‘to report’ (2.78), see Section 5.7.9.

[2.121] In the discussion of diatheses in this book I consistently distinguish governed applicatives [pbj › obj] and governed antipassives [obj › pbj] when the prepositional phrase is a governed preposition. An example of a governed applicative is the diathesis between arbeiten an ‘to work on’ (with a governed preposition an) and bearbeiten ‘to edit, adapt’ (2.79), see Section 7.8.11. An example of a governed antipassive is the diathesis between beklagen ‘to lament’ and sich beklagen ‘to complain’ (with a governed preposition über) (2.80), see Section 6.7.5. However, the differentiation between the governed and non-governed applicative/antipassive does not currently allow for any promising semantic of structural generalisations, so this differentiation might grammatically be unnecessary. I have indicated this close affinity graphically in Figure 2.3 by surrounding thick lines.

[2.122] There are a many diatheses with a role-remapping between adjunct and object that do not have any overt indication of a direction. Without explicit marking it is difficult to decide whether such diatheses are cases of (applicative) promotion [adj › obj] or (antipassive) demotion [obj › adj]. For the sake of organisation in this book I classify such covert alternations on the basis of (debatable) semantic intuitions.

[2.123] Most covert diatheses with an alternation between prepositional phrases and case-marked arguments are classified here as antipassive, like in the alternation between schießen auf ‘to aim at’ and schießen ‘to shoot’ (2.81 a), see Section 5.7.6. This is also widespread with datives (2.81 b), see Section 5.7.9. In such examples, I judge the case-marking to be more basic than the prepositional phrase. In contrast, there is a widespread alternation between datives and für prepositional phrases (2.81), that I classify as an applicative, see Section 5.8.9. In this example the dative seems to be the derived construction.

[2.124] There is a further kind of covert diathesis with a dative object, conventionally called possessor raising. In such diatheses there is an alternation between a possessor (typically expressed as an adnominal genitive) and a dative (2.83). The dative can alternate with the possessor of a nominative subject (see Section 4.8.3), an accusative object (see Section 4.8.4) or a location (see Section 5.8.10). Following convention, I classify these diatheses as promotion [adj › obj]

[2.125] These two covert kinds of dative applicative are semantically and structurally clearly distinct. The datives that show a possessive alternation (2.83) are semantically experiencers. In contrast, datives that alternate with für prepositional phrases (2.82) are semantically benefactors. In especially crafted context it is possible to evoke either reading for the same sentence, (2.84).

Objectives & deobjectives

[2.126] A deobjective diathesis [obj › ø] is a diathesis that drops an object, i.e. a role cannot be expressed anymore (the term is taken from Haspelmath & Müller-Bardey 2004: 1131). A deobjective drop is illustrated in (2.85) with an alternation from kaufen ‘to buy’ to einkaufen ‘to shop’, see Section 7.7.1 for an extensive discussion.

[2.127] A special variant of a deobjective occurs with verbs that apply to the body, like verbrennen ‘to burn’ (2.86). In such constructions, a reflexive pronoun is necessary. This diathesis is called endoreflexive (Haspelmath 1987: 27-28), see Section 6.7.1 for an extensive discussion.

[2.128] An objective diathesis [ø › obj] is a diathesis that adds a new object, i.e. a completely new role is introduced in the form of an object. An example of an overtly marked object addition is the alternation from zaubern ‘to perform magic’ to verzaubern ‘to enchant’ (2.87). Additions are frequently attested with preverbs like ver-, see Section 7.8.1.

[2.129] A semantically special subgroup of object additions are resultatives. A resultative diatheses adds an object that is the result of performing the predicate.⁹ An overtly marked resultative is illustrated in (2.88) with the diathesis between arbeiten ‘to work’ and the inherent reflexive sich etwas erarbeiten ‘to acquire something through work’, see Section 7.8.7. The result of the work is added as an object in (2.88 b).

[2.130] Objectives and deobjectives are frequently attested without any overt marking (cf. ambitransitive/labile verbs), and in such ‘covert’ diatheses it is difficult to establish a direction. As already noted in the previous section, for the sake of organisation in this book I classify such covert alternations on the basis of (often debatable) semantic intuitions. For example, the verb stören ‘to disturb’ (2.89) can be used both with and without an accusative object, see Section 4.7.1. This is classified here as a deobjective diathesis. Such unmarked object drops are also attested with datives, see Section 4.7.4, and with governed prepositions, see Section 5.7. The dropping of an object is also often possible to put the focus on the action itself, but then it is typically used with an adverbial, see Section 8.7.1 for an extensive discussion.

[2.131] In contrast, the verb stottern ‘to stutter’ is classified here as an example of object addition (2.90), although there is no formal differentiation from the previous example with object drop (2.89). The intuition is that stottern is basically intransitive (and any object is thus added), while stören is basically transitive (and any missing object is thus dropped). Correlated with this proposed difference is the fact that covert object addition with stottern has a resultative interpretation (2.90 b). However, it remains to be seen whether there is really a difference between these two kinds of verbs (see Section 4.8.1 for an extensive discussion).

Locatives & delocatives

[2.132] A locative diathesis [ø › pbj] is a diatheses that adds an obligatory locational propositional phrase pbj to the clause.¹⁰ For example, the transitive befehlen ‘to order’ marks the ordered person as an accusative (2.91 a). With an (directional) locative phrase an die Front ‘to the frontline’ the sentence gets a caused-motion or resultative reading (2.91 b), see Section 5.8.5.

[2.133] Even more noteworthy, such a locative diathesis is also possible with many intransitive verbs like schwitzen ‘to sweat’ (2.92 a). With such verbs, a locative diathesis not only adds a location, like in meinem Hemd ‘in my shirt’, but also an resultative accusative object, like einen Fleck ‘a stain’ (2.92 b), see Section 5.8.4.

[2.134] The reversal of a locative diathesis is a delocative diathesis [pbj › ø]. In such a diathesis an obligatory location loses its obligatory status. An example of such a diathesis is shown in (2.93) with the alternation between stecken ‘to put into’ and verstecken ‘to hide’. The verb stecken needs an obligatory location (2.93 a,b). Such an obligatory location is classified here as a prepositional object pbj (see Section 2.2.2). The situation is different with the verb verstecken. With this verb the location is an optional adjunct and can be left out (see Section 7.7.11 for an extensive discussion).

Symmetrical object diatheses

[2.135] Symmetrical object diatheses are rare in German. A case change [obj › obj] is illustrated in (2.94) by the alternation between folgen ‘to follow’ (with dative) and verfolgen ‘to chase’ (with accusative), see Section 7.9.7.

[2.136] A governed preposition change [pbj › pbj] occurs in a special kind of construction with a reflexive pronouns that induces a change in lexical specific prepositions, like arbeiten an ‘to work on’ changing into sich arbeiten durch ‘to work through’ (2.95), see Section 6.9.4.

[2.137] An adjunct change [adj › adj] is, according to the definitions, not a diathesis at all, as adjuncts are not lexically specific. However, the change between a possessor and a prepositional phrase as shown in (2.96) can be seen as as a borderline examples, see Section 5.9.3.

2.7.5 Chained object diathesis

[2.138] Chains of object diatheses (i.e. chains with the object in the middle of the chain) can always be interpreted as a combination of two isolated (‘single’) diatheses from the previous section. However, not all theoretically possible combinations are attested (see Figure 2.4). The pattern of which chains are attested is clearly not-random, though I do not have an insightful rationale for the distribution as shown in the figure.

Full applicatives

[2.139] The patterns in the center of the figure are the most frequent chains with an object, called collectively full applicative [adj › obj › adj]. These diatheses are combinations of an applicative promotion [adj › obj] and an antipassive demotion [obj › adj]. A typical example is the diathesis between werfen ‘to throw’ and bewerfen ‘to throw at’ (2.97), see Section 7.9.3. In such examples a prepositional phrase turns into an accusative, and the erstwhile accusative into a prepositional phrase.

[2.140] The prepositional phrase of the applicative is in some examples a governed preposition, e.g. with zwingen ‘to force’ (2.99 a,b). This chain is thus a remapping of the form [pbj › obj › adj], but I will still call this a full applicative (see Section 7.9.5).

[2.141] A special case of a full applicative is illustrated here with the verb bewundern ‘to admire’ (2.99), see Section 5.8.12. This verb (and others like it) show a combination of a possessor raising applicative [adj › obj] and a governed antipassive [obj › pbj] leading to a full applicative chain [adj › obj › pbj].

Objectives & deobjectives

[2.142] At the right and at the bottom of Figure 2.4 are chains that involve the addition or drop of a lexical role. An objective [ø › obj] is typically chained with an antipassive [obj › pbj/adj], resulting in a chain [ø › obj › pbj]. This is attested in the resultative object addition with the verb schneiden to cut (2.100), see Section 5.8.7. A new object, that is the result of the cutting, is introduced, while the old object is turned into a prepositional phrase (2.100 a,b). This prepositional phrase cannot be left out (10.45 c), so it classified here as an obligatory location (pbj).

[2.143] The reversed chain [pbj › obj › ø] is illustrated in (2.101) with the diathesis between the verb pressen ‘to squeeze’ and auspressen ‘to squeeze’, see Section 7.7.12. The verb pressen takes an accusative that expressed the result of the squeezing (Saft), and the squeezee (Zitrone) is expressed as an obligatory prepositional phrase (2.101 a,b). The antiresultative auspressen (2.101 c) drops the result (Saft) and promotes the squeezee (Zitrone) to accusative.

Case changes

[2.144] Finally, there are a few chains involving a change of case at the top and the left of Figure 2.4. Note that when a case-change dative/genitive-to-accusative is seen as a promotion, and the reverse as a demotion (cf. paragraph 2.37), than the following diatheses can be interpreted as further examples of full applicatives.

[2.145] Example (2.102) shows a combination of a dative-to-accusative case change with an antipassive, resulting in a chain [obj › obj › adj]. The verb schenken ‘to gift’ takes a recipient in the dative and a patient in the accusative, while the derived beschenken ‘to gift’ turns the accusative into a prepositional phrase (i.e. antipassive) and changes the dative dir into an accusative dich (see Section 7.7.8).

[2.146] The reverse situation, i.e. a chain [adj › obj › obj], is attested with the diathesis between drängen ‘to urge’ and the marked aufdrängen ‘to impose’ (2.103), see Section 7.8.15. In this example a prepositional phrase changes into an accusative (i.e. applicative), while the accusative dich changes to dative dir.

[2.147] Finally, an incidental diathesis is attested with the verb rauben ‘to rob’ (2.104), see Section 7.9.8. When this verb is changed to berauben ‘to rob’ then two case changes happen simultaneously: first a dative-to-accusative change (dich becomes dir) and second an accusative-to-genitive change (das Buch becomes des Buches). This is thus an example of a remapping pattern [obj › obj › obj]. However, note that the chain dative-to-accusative-to-genitive suggests a combination of promotion and demotion, alike to a full applicative.

3 Summary of major diatheses

3.1 German names for German grammar

[3.1] Among all the diatheses that are distinguished in this survey there are many that only occur in very specific situations or might otherwise be considered to be exceptions or incidental instances. However, there are also very many diatheses that are highly frequent and can be used with very many different verbs. Those major diatheses, that are of central importance to the grammatical structure of German, will be summarised in this chapter. Such a summary would normally be presented at the end of a book, but because of the often long-winding data-driven details of the subsequent descriptive chapters I decided to present this summary here at the end of the introductory deliberations. Take it as a quick appetiser of things to come, with ample links to the actual discussion in later chapters.

[3.2] To reiterate the basic premise of this book: in the subsequent chapters 4 to 12 I aim to present a complete list of all coherent, and thus monoclausal, clause structures in German (cf. Section 1.3.1 on defining monoclausality). All in all, in those chapters there are 250+ separate sub-subsections that describe (often minor) variations of monoclausal structures. This diversity is condensed into 90+ major clause alternations as summarised in this chapter. Of those, about 70 are diatheses (i.e. clause alternations with role-remapping), while about 20 are epitheses (i.e. clause alternations without any change in role marking). All these counts should be taken with some leeway, because a lot depends on individual decisions about splitting or lumping structures into groups (e.g. how many lassen + infinitive constructions are counted separately, cf Section 10.2.5). Although the analysis of German clause alternations might look cleaner when lumping structures into larger groups, the diversity is actually not reduced, only hidden at the cost of larger within-group complexity.

[3.3] Besides a basic summary I also propose German names for all 90+ major derived monoclausal sentence structures. Using suitable names is a central aspect of (scientific) communication. In grammar, names are like instruments that allow us to abstract away from individual details and manipulate classes of utterances that show a specific abstract structure. However, naming is hard and can also lead to miscommunication. When re-using available terminology, the terms are easily recognised and remembered, but they carry the weight of history. Even when detailed definitions are given (as I have tried to do throughout this book), unintended interpretations of previous usage inevitably seep through. In contrast, inventing new names introduces more precision, but the downside are often cumbersome terms that are difficult to remember.

[3.4] In naming diatheses in this book I have tried to strike a balance between precise naming and good readability. For the English names in the detailed discussions in the coming chapters, I have decided in favour or precision. Each phenomenon is newly named with often long descriptive and unique names. In contrast, for the German names in this chapter I try to reuse available terminology as much as possible. When necessary, I propose new names that attempt to evoke a functional description like Reziprokativ or Erlebnispassiv. However, the semantic characterisation has not been the main focus of this book, so it might become necessary to rename diatheses in the future once more detailed investigations have been performed. In some cases I have not been able to find a suitable semantic characterisation. For those diatheses I have resorted to using formal characteristics in the name, always written as separate words, like Reflexiv Erlebnispassiv

[3.5] In this chapter, the diatheses are organised in sections according to the macro-role remapping patterns as introduced in Section 2.7. The different diatheses in each section are thus functionally highly similar, but they are structurally different. Inversely, there are various diatheses that structurally highly similar, but are nonetheless repeated in separate sections under different names. This is necessary because superficially identical diathesis can have rather different structural repercussions depending on the verb to which it is applied. This happens for examples with the sein + Partizip or the lassen + sich + Infinitiv constructions.

[3.6] Before diving into the daunting diversity of German diathesis, a short note on German names for different clause types is in order (see Table 3.1). The distinction between sentence (German: satz) and clause (German: teilsatz) is customary made in the German grammatical literature when a precise description is needed. However, the term Satz is often used as a shorthand for both. Subdividing clauses, there is of course a basic distinction between main clause (German: hauptsatz, more precise would be selbständiger teilsatz) and subordinate clause (German: nebensatz or alternatively untergeordneter teilsatz).

[3.7] Yet, a central thesis of this book is that there is a further subdivision for both main and subordinate clauses into three different kinds of clauses (see Section 2.1). First, a ‘basic clause’ is a clause with a single (finite) verb form in the Präsens or Imperfekt. For German I propose the term basissatz, or, to be more precise, grundlegender teilsatz. Second, an ‘epithesis’ is a clause alternant without role-remapping. For German I propose either the German neologism übersatz or the Greek-inspired epithese, or, to be more precise, erweiterter teilsatz. Finally, a diathesis is a clause with role-remapping. For German I propose the German neologism wechselsatz or the Greek-inspired diathese, or, to be more precise, umgestellter teilsatz.

— Diatheses with remapping of the subject —

3.2 Verbative diatheses [sbj › ø]

3.2.1 Verbativ

[3.8] The unmarked verbativ (full discussion in Section 4.5.1 and subsequent sections) is typically found with dispersion verbs like stinken ‘to stink’, klingeln ‘to ring’ or krachen ‘to crunch’ (3.1 a). These verbs allow for an construction without explicit nominative subject describing a general situation with unknown cause. To replace the nominative subject a valency-simulating pronoun es is used (3.1 b). Additionally, various verbs that allow for impersonal constructions like es gibt ‘there exist’ or es wimmelt von ‘to swarm’ belong to this category of diatheses.

3.2.2 Wertungsverbativ

[3.9] The wertungsverbativ (full discussion in Section 8.5.1) similarly replaces the nominative subject by a valency-simulating es. Additionally, this diathesis obligatorily needs a reflexive pronoun and an adverbial phrase describing an evaluation, like gut ‘fine’ or angenehm ‘pleasantly’. The Wertungsverbativ is typically used with agentive intransitive verbs like leben ‘to live’ or tanzen ‘to dance’ and describes a habitual situation. This diathesis is arguably closely related to the wertungsantikausativ (see Section 3.6.4).

3.2.3 Unpersönlicher Vorgangspassiv (werden + Partizip)

[3.10] The unpersönlicher vorgangspassiv is a construction consisting of the light verb werden with a participle of an intransitive verb (full discussion in Section 9.5.1). Only agentive (‘unergative’) intransitive verbs like tanzen ‘to dance’ (3.3) or schlafen ‘to sleep’ allow for this construction without any nominative subject (not even a valency-simulating es is needed). The name ‘passive’ is rather unfitting for this diathesis, but it is retained here because of widespread usage. This construction is arguably closely related to the vorgangspassiv for transitive verbs (see Section 3.7.1).

3.2.4 Unpersönlicher Möglichkeitspassiv (lassen + sich + Infinitiv)

[3.11] The unpersönlicher möglichkeitspassiv consists of the light verb lassen with the infinitive of an intransitive verb (full discussion in Section 10.5.1). This construction obligatory includes a reflexive pronoun and an evaluating adverbial expression like gut ‘fine’. A valency-simulating pronoun es appears to be optional. Similar to the previous diathesis, this diathesis also seems to be restricted to agentive intransitive verbs like arbeiten ‘to work’ (3.4). Likewise, the name ‘passive’ is ill-fitting here, but it is used because of the parallelism to the previous diathesis. This construction is arguably closely related to the möglichkeitspassiv for transitive verbs (see Section 3.7.2).

3.2.5 Unpersönlicher Modalpassiv (sein + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.12] The unpersönlicher modalpassiv (full discussion in Section 11.5.1 and subsequent sections) consists of a light verb sein with zu and an infinitive. It is found with incidental intransitive verbs, but more typically with verbs with a dative argument (but no accusative) like helfen ‘to help’ or trauen ‘to trust’ (3.5). In this diathesis the nominative subject is dropped and cannot be retained in any other form. There is also no valency-simulating es present. The name ‘passive’ is actually besides the point for this diathesis, but it is used here because this construction is closely related to the modalpassiv (see Section 3.7.3).

3.3 Demoted subject diatheses [sbj › adj]

3.3.1 Auftragsherabstufung (geben/gelten + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.13] The auftragsherabstufung (full discussion in Section 11.5.4 and subsequent sections) uses a subjectless light verbs gelten (3.6 a) or geben (3.6 b) with zu and an infinitive. The removed nominative subject is replaced by a valency-simulating pronoun es, so the light verbs are always in the third person singular, resulting in fixed expressions es gibt or es gilt. Any other argument is simply preserved, like the accusative den Koffer ‘the suitcase’ in the examples below. The removed subject can optionally be retained with a für prepositional phrase (though less easy with es gibt). These constructions semantically invoke some kind of assignment or possibility. Additionally, the geben diatheses (but not gelten) typically is used with some kind of quantification (3.6 b). The geben diathesis is related to the Auftragskausativ (see Section 3.10.8).

3.4 Conciliative diatheses [adj › sbj › ø]

3.4.1 Instrumentsubjektivierung

[3.14] The instrumentsubjektivierung (full discussion in Section 5.5.4 and subsequent sections) promotes an instrument to nominative subject. For example, the instrument Schlüssel ‘key’ of the verb öffnen ‘to open’ is expressed with a mit prepositional phrase in (3.7 a). Alternatively, it can be expressed with a nominative as in (3.7 b). In that construction, the original agent cannot be expressed anymore. This diathesis looks very similar to the Kreationsubjektivierung (see Section 3.5.1), but there are crucial semantic and structural differences (discussed below).

3.5 Fabricative diatheses [pbj › sbj › ø]

3.5.1 Kreationsubjektivierung

[3.15] The kreationssubjektivierung (full discussion in Section 5.5.7) on first notice looks very similar to the previous Instrumentsubjektivierung. In both diatheses a mit prepositional phrase is promoted to nominative subject. However, with verb like überraschen ‘to surprise’ (3.8) the prepositional phrase does not represent an instrument, but a creation of the subject Lehrer ‘teacher’. This semantic difference is paralleled by a structural difference, namely that the mit prepositional phrase is a governed preposition (3.8 c). The verbs that allow for a Kreationsubjektivierung show a substantial overlap with the verbs that allow for the reflexiv erlebnispassiv (see Section 3.8.2), though the two groups are not identical.

3.6 Anticausative diatheses [obj › sbj › ø]

3.6.1 Antikausativ

[3.16] The unmarked antikausativ (full discussion in Section 4.5.5 and subsequent sections) is attested with verbs like öffnen ‘to open’ or kochen ‘to cook’. These verbs occur both as transitive (3.9 a) and intransitive (3.9 b) without any further grammatical marking. Crucially, the object of the transitive is the subject of the intransitive. Because this diathesis is unmarked, there is no formal indication of a direction. So, this diathesis could just as well be interpreted as a causative. However, there is a formal difference between verbs that in the intransitive allow for both a haben and sein perfect (3.9 c,d) and those that only allow for a sein perfect. There seems to be an interesting semantic correlate to this formal difference in that the verbs that allow for both haben and sein seem primarily transitiv. Consequentially this first group is called antikausativ, while the second group with only sein is called kausativ (see Section 3.10.1).

3.6.2 Ortsantikausativ

[3.17] The ortsantikausativ (full discussion in Section 5.5.10) is similar to the previous unmarked antikausativ. Verbs like kleben ‘to glue, to stick’ or klappen ‘to fold’ occur both as transitive and intransitive (3.10 a,b) with the object of the transitive being the subject of the intransitive. Also the intransitive is possible with both haben and sein in the perfect (3.10 c,d). The only difference is the obligatory presence of a location. Note that there is also a parallel ortskausativ (see Section 3.10.2).

3.6.3 Reflexiv Antikausativ

[3.18] The reflexiv antikausativ (full discussion in Section 6.5.2 and subsequent sections) is attested with verbs like entscheiden ‘to decide’ or beschränken ‘to limit’. Again, these verbs occur both as transitive and intransitive with the transitive object being the subject of the intransitive (3.11 a,b). However, with these verbs the intransitive needs an obligatory reflexive pronoun (3.11 b). The intransitive with reflexive pronoun typically takes haben in the perfect (3.11 c). The intransitive perfect with sein (3.11 d) can now clearly be identified as a zustandspassiv of the transitive (see Section 3.7.4).

3.6.4 Wertungsantikausativ

[3.19] The wertungsantikausativ (full discussion in Section 8.5.2 and subsequent sections) is possible with many straightforward transitive verbs, like with verkaufen ‘to sell’ or lesen ‘to read’ (3.12 a). The anticausative intransitive obligatorily needs a reflexive pronoun, and additionally an obligatory manner adverbial is needed (3.12 b). Just like the previous anticausatives, the intransitive occurs both with haben and sein in the perfect. However, haben is clearly used with the reflexive anticausative construction with obligatory adverbial (3.12 c), while sein is used with the zustandspassiv (see Section 3.7.4) of the original transitive, without reflexive pronoun or obligatory adverbial evaluation (3.12 d).

3.6.5 Kontinuativantikausativ (bleiben + Partizip)

[3.20] The kontinuativantikausativ (full discussion in Section 9.5.10) is closely related to the sein Zustandspassiv (see Section 3.7.4), but now the light verb bleiben is used with a participle (3.13). Both sein and bleiben are known as auxiliaries (kopulaverben) in German grammar, so this parallel construction is not unexpected. However, not all verbs can be equally used in both constructions. For example, verbs like schreiben ‘to write’ or waschen ‘to wash’ are fine with the sein-Zustandspassiv but not with the bleiben-Kontinuativpassiv. Also the retention of the original agent as a prepositional phrase seems to be impossible here, so this diathesis is classified as an anticausative (3.13 b). This anticausative is only attested with transitive verbs. The same bleiben + Partizip construction can be used with intransitive verbs, but then it does not induce a diathesis and will consequently be called kontinuativperfekt (see Section 3.24.3).

3.6.6 Apparitivantikausativ (aussehen/(er)scheinen/wirken + Partizip)

[3.21] The apparitivantikausativ (full discussion in Section 9.5.11 and subsequent sections) is constructed with one of the light verbs aussehen, scheinen, erscheinen and wirken with a participle of a transitive verb. The retention of the original agent as a prepositional phrase seems to be mostly not possible, so this diathesis is classified as an anticausative here. With intransitive verbs this construction does not show any diathesis, called apparativperfekt (see Section 3.24.5).

3.6.7 Präsentativantikausativ (geben/zeigen + sich + Partizip)

[3.22] The präsentativantikausativ (full discussion in Section 9.5.12) uses the light verb geben with a participle and an obligatory reflexive pronoun to express a conscious performance of verb by the erstwhile accusative. The original nominative cannot be retained. The light verb zeigen can be used alternatively to geben. Any difference between these two light verbs needs more investigation.

3.6.8 Kognitionsantikausativ (stehen + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.23] The kognitionsantikausativ (full discussion in Section 11.5.6) uses a light verb stehen with zu and infinitive. The original accusative object is promoted to subject and the erstwhile nominative subject cannot be retained, so this clearly is an anticausative diathesis. However, examples with an explicitly accusative noun phrase as in (3.16 a) are actually rare. Typically, this diatheses is found with cognitive predicates, like befürchten ‘to fear’, with a dass complement clause (3.16 b). Functionally, this complement clause has the same status as an accusative object. Note that complement clauses typically come towards the end of the sentence in German, and then the first position of the sentence often has to be filled with a position-simulating pronoun es (which is removed when the first position is filled otherwise).

3.7 Passive diatheses [obj › sbj › adj]

3.7.1 Vorgangspassiv (werden + Partizip)

[3.24] The vorgangspassiv (full discussion in Section 9.5.14) is the infamous diathesis consisting of a light verb werden with a participle. Passives are very similar to anticausatives in that the transitive object is turned into the intransitive subject (3.17). The special characteristic of a passive is that the transitive subject can be optionally retained as a prepositional von or durch phrase. However, note that this prepositional phrase is normally not used. The same werden + Partizip construction leads to a different diathesis with intransitive verbs, namely the Unpersönlicher Passiv (see Section 3.2.3).

3.7.2 Möglichkeitspassiv (lassen + sich + Infinitiv)

[3.25] The möglichkeitspassiv (full discussion in Section 10.5.3) consists of the light verb lassen with infinitive and an obligatory reflexive pronoun (3.18). The agent can be retained as a von prepositional phrase, so this diathesis is a passive. The same construction applied to intransitive verbs leads to a different diathesis, namely the Unpersönlicher Möglichkeitspassiv (see Section 3.2.4).

3.7.3 Modalpassiv (sein + zu + infinitive)

[3.26] The modalpassiv (full discussion in Section 11.5.8) is constructed using the light verb sein with zu and an infinitive. When applied to transitive verbs like führen ‘to lead’ (3.19 a) or lösen ‘to solve’ (3.19 b) this diathesis promotes the accusative to nominative subject. The erstwhile nominative subject can be retained as a prepositional phrase. This diathesis has two different interpretations. It can indicate either an deontic modality (‘must’) as in (3.19 a) or an ability (‘can’) as in (3.19 b). Note that the subject retention with the preposition für is only possible in the ability-interpretation. The closely related Unpersönlicher Modalpassiv is used with intransitives and only allows for the deontic interpretation (see Section 3.2.5).

3.7.4 Zustandspassiv (sein + Partizip)

[3.27] The zustandspassiv (full discussion in Section 9.5.15) consists of a light verb sein with a participle (3.20). Although this diathesis is traditionally called ‘passive’ in German grammar, the status of the retained agent is problematic (3.20 b). It might thus be better to consider this diathesis to be an anticausative. However, because of the long tradition I hold on to the term Zustandspassiv. The closely-related sein + Partizip erlebnispassiv (see Section 3.8.1) retains the subject with a governed preposition. Also the sein + Partizip perfekt as found with some intransitive verbs (see Section 3.24.2) is arguably also the same construction, though applied to different verbs.

3.7.5 Normpassiv (gehören + Partizip)

[3.28] The normpassiv (full discussion in Section 9.5.16) consists of the light verb gehören with a participle. It is only attested with verbs with accusative objects, like bestrafen ‘to punish’ (3.21). The diathesis expresses that the main verb ought to be applied to the object. The original subject an optionally be retained as a prepositional phrase.

3.7.6 Rezipientenpassiv (bekommen/kriegen/erhalten + Partizip)

[3.29] The rezipientenpassiv (full discussion in Section 9.5.19) has become a mainstay in the German grammatical literature. It consists of the light verb bekommen with a participle (alternatively, the light verbs kriegen or erhalten can be used). With this diathesis, a dative recipient is turned into the nominative subject. Again, the erstwhile nominative can be retained as a prepositional phrase, though it mostly is not used (as with all passives).

3.7.7 Pertinenzpassiv (haben + Partizip)

[3.30] The pertinenzpassiv (full discussion in Section 9.5.20) is a special construction because it looks identical to the haben Perfekt (see Section 3.24.1), often even being ambiguous among the two interpretations. However, the Pertinenzpassiv is functionally much closer to the Rezipientenpassiv. The new nominative subject der Minister ‘the minister’ (3.23 b) is the (dative) experiencer/benefactor of the cutting (3.23 a). The original agent of the cutting Friseur ‘barber’ can only be retained with difficulty, so this diathesis looks closer to an anticausative. However, there is a well-known effect that this Pertinenzpassiv becomes much more common when stacked with a modal auxiliary like wollen ‘to want’ (3.23 c). In such a stack, the original agent can clearly be retained.

[3.31] The designation pertinenz refers to the fact that the new subject is necessarily the possessor of the accusative object Haare, ‘hair’. Such inherent possessors turn up in various diatheses, and all instances will be designated with the qualifier pertinenz. The most famous one is the pertinenzdativ (see Section 3.13.4), but there are various others, like the pertinenzinversiv (see Section 3.9.2) and the ortspertinenzinversiv (see Section 3.9.3).

3.7.8 Permissivpassiv (lassen + sich + Infinitiv)

[3.32] The permissivpassiv (full discussion in Section 10.5.6) is constructed with the light verb lassen with an infinitive and an obligatory reflexive pronoun. Similar to the Rezipientenpassiv, when applied to a ditransitive clause with an accusative and a dative the original dative is turned into a new nominative subject (but now with a dative reflexive pronoun), like with schenken ‘to gift’ (3.24). Semantically, there is a permissive modality introduced. This is a rather different from diatheses with lassen + sich + Infinitive discussed earlier (see Section 3.2.4 and 3.7.2). However, there is a close link to the permissivinversiv with transitive verbs (see Section 3.9.4). The permissive reading is also reminiscent of the lassen + Infinitiv permissivkausativ (see Section 3.10.4).

3.8 Conversive diatheses [obj › sbj › pbj]

3.8.1 Erlebnispassiv (sein + Partizip)

[3.33] The erlebnispassiv (full discussion in Section 9.5.21) is constructed with the light verb sein and a participle. The form of this diathesis is identical to the Zustandspassiv (see Section 3.7.4), but there is a crucial difference in the remapping of the original nominative. Verbs that take a Zustandspassiv, like öffnen ‘to open’ only allow for the retention of the nominative with a von prepositional phrase, and only in special circumstances. In contrast, the verbs that take the Erlebnispassiv can regularly retain the agent with a governed preposition. For example, verärgern ‘to displease’ can express the original nominative with an über prepositional phrase (3.25 b), which is a governed preposition (3.25 c). Verbs that take the Erlebnispassiv are typically verbs the express an experience.

3.8.2 Reflexiv Erlebnispassiv

[3.34] The reflexiv erlebnispassiv (full discussion in Section 6.5.8) is a diathesis in which a verb, like empören ‘to appall’ (3.26 a), can be used both with and without a reflexive pronoun. The effect of adding the reflexive pronoun is a remapping of the accusative to nominative and demoting the erstwhile nominative to a prepositional phrase (3.26 b). The prepositional phrase is a governed preposition (3.26 c). The verbs that allow this diathesis are typically verbs that express an experience. This diathesis is functionally rather similar to the previous Erlebnispassiv (see Section 3.8.1) and there are even many verbs that allow for both diatheses, like empören (3.26 d). However, not all verbs allow for both diatheses, like verärgern (3.25 d).

3.9 Inversive diatheses [obj › sbj › obj]

3.9.1 Restinversiv (bleiben + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.35] The restinversive (full discussion in Section 11.9.1) uses the light verb bleiben with zu and an infinitive. This diathesis reverses the expression of the roles in that the accusative is promoted to a nominative, while the original nominative is demoted to an (optional) dative. Because the demotion is ‘larger’ than the promotion this would be called a demoted inversive. Semantically, this diatheses expresses that (some part of) the patient is still left over to be applied to the verb.

3.9.2 Pertinenzinversiv (haben + am + Infinitiv)

[3.36] The pertinenzinversiv (full discussion in Section 12.9.1), using the light verb haben with am and an infinitive, reverses the expression of the roles, though in the different direction from the previous Restinversiv (see Section 3.9.1). In this diathesis the dative is promoted to nominative, while the nominative is demoted to accusative (3.28). Further, the dative dem Mieter ‘tenant’ is necessarily the possessor (pertinenz) of the nominative die Wohnung ‘appartment’, i.e. it is a pertinenzdativ (see Section 3.13.4). Both in form and meaning this diathesis is strongly connected to the ensuing ortspertinenzinversiv (see Section 3.9.3), in which the dative is the possessor of the obligatory location. It seems possible that the preposition am in this diathesis is in some way related to the absence of any location here.

3.9.3 Ortspertinenzinversiv (haben + Infinitiv)

[3.37] The ortspertinenzinversiv (full discussion in Section 10.9.2) is closely related to the previous pertinenzinversiv (see Section 3.9.2). Again, a dative is promoted to nominative, while the nominative is demoted to accusative. Also in both diatheses, the participant expressed by the dative is necessarily the possessor (pertinenz) of another participant. The difference is that with the current ortspertinenzinversiv this ‘other’ participant is an obligatory location, e.g. an der Nase ‘on the nose’ in (3.29). The dative in this diathesis is thus an ortspertinenzdativ (see Section 3.13.5). An interesting difference to the previous Pertinenzinveriv is that the infinitive does not take the preposition am here (3.29 c).

3.9.4 Permissivinversiv (lassen + sich + Infinitiv)

[3.38] The permissivinversiv (full discussion in Section 10.9.1) is yet another diathesis using the construction lassen with obligatory reflexive and infinitive, this time used with verbs that take a dative, but no accusative like schmecken ‘to taste’ (3.30). The current diathesis appears to be particularly close to the Permissivpassiv (see Section 3.7.8). In both diatheses a dative is promoted to nominative with an obligatory reflexive pronoun. Differently though, in this diathesis the original nominative es demoted to accusative (compared to an optional prepositional phrase in the Permissivpassiv). Both diatheses add a causative/permissive meaning to the clause, reminiscent of the lassen + Infinitiv causative (see Section 3.10.4).

3.10 Novative diatheses [ø › sbj › obj]

3.10.1 Kausativ

[3.39] The unmarked kausativ (full discussion in Section 4.6.2 and subsequent sections) is found with verb like schmelzen ‘to melt’, trocknen ‘to dry’ or zerbrechen ‘break’ (3.31 a,b). These verbs both occur as intransitive and as transitive with the intransitive subject being the object of the transitive. The new nominative subject of the transitive is a causer. Because this diathesis is unmarked, it is not immediately clear whether such a verbs is an examples of a Kausativ or an Antikausativ (see Section 3.6.1). As a formal characteristic for differentiation I propose to look at the auxiliaries of the intransitive perfect: anticausatives allow for both haben and sein, while causatives only allow for sein (3.31 c,d). Various old ablaut-causatives like fallen/fällen and biegen/beugen also belong in this category.

3.10.2 Ortskausativ

[3.40] The ortskausativ (full discussion in Section 5.6.1 and subsequent sections) is similar to the previous Kausativ (see Section 3.10.1), only that the verbs like fahren ‘to drive’ and stürzen ‘to fall/topple’ (3.32 a,b) obligatory need a location (especially in the transitive). There is a parallel Ortsantikausativ in which the intransitive allows for both a sein and a haben perfect (see Section 3.6.2). Various old ablaut-causatives like liegen/legen ‘to lie/to lay’ and sitzen/setzen ‘to sit/to put’ also belong in this category.

3.10.3 Präverb Kausativ

[3.41] The präverb kausativ (full discussion in Section 7.6.1 and subsequent sections) overtly marks the causative by a preverb (3.33), i.e. either by a verb prefix (e.g. enden/beenden ‘to end’) or by a verb particle (e.g. bruzeln/anbruzeln ‘to sizzle/to fry’). Preverbs are also frequently used to add a causer to an adjective forming a transitive verb (e.g grün/begrünen ‘green/to plant’, dunkel/verdunkeln ‘dark/to darken’).

3.10.4 Permissivkausativ (lassen + Infinitiv)

[3.42] The permissivkausativ (full discussion in Section 10.6.2) consists of the light verb lassen with an infinitive. This diathesis is widely acknowledged in German grammar. It is often simply called a Kausativ but this construction has actually at least two different interpretations, namely a causative (3.34 c) and a permissive (3.34 d). It is widely used in German and there are only few verbs that do not allow for this diathesis (e.g. gefallen ‘to like’ or interessieren ‘to interest’).

3.10.5 Agentivkausativ (machen + Infinitiv)

[3.43] The agentivkausativ (full discussion in Section 10.6.4) is probably the most pure causative of all the various novative light verb with infinitive diatheses. It uses the light verb machen ‘to make’ and adds a causer. It is not in very widespread use and often sound like English calques, though it is probably an old Germanic construction.

3.10.6 Direktivkausativ (schicken + Infinitiv)

[3.44] The direktivkausativ (full discussion in Section 10.6.3) is a causative with the extra semantic aspects that some form of instructions are given. This diathesis is constructed with the light verb schicken with infinitive. The meaning of the construction is rather close to the full lexical meaning of schicken ‘to send’. However, this construction is coherent, and thus monoclausal (3.36 c).

3.10.7 Aktivitätskausativ (bringen/kriegen + zum + Infinitiv)

[3.45] The aktivitätskausativ (full discussion in Section 12.6.1) consists of the light verb bringen with zum and infinitive. This diathesis adds a nominative causer to intransitive verbs like tanzen ‘to dance’ (3.37 a). Accusative objects of transitive verbs can only be expressed when incorporated, forming predicates like Briefeschreiben ‘letter-writing’ (3.37 b). Such verbs with incorporated object are arguably intransitives.

3.10.8 Auftragskausativ (geben + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.46] The auftragskausativ (full discussion in Section 11.6.1) adds a causer by using the light verb geben with zu and an infinitive. In this diathesis the erstwhile subject becomes a dative (not an accusative). In many examples of this diathesis the meaning of this diathesis is very close to the meaning of the lexical verb geben ‘to give’. For example with the verb trinken ‘to drink’ (3.38 a) the diathesis implies both the literal interpretation ‘he gives X to Y for drinking’ and the causative interpretation ‘he causes Y to drink X’. Whatever the interpretation, this construction is coherent, and thus monoclausal (3.38 b), so, whatever the precise semantic interpretation, this is structurally clearly a diathesis. The light-verb status of geben is better exemplified with verbs that take clausal complements like bedenken ‘to consider’ (3.38 c).

3.10.9 Perzeptiv (sehen/hören/fühlen/spüren + Infinitiv)

[3.47] The perzeptiv (full discussion in Section 10.6.6 and subsequent sections) is a novative that consists of one of the verbs of sensation sehen/hören/fühlen/spüren with an infinitive. The new nominative is an observer/experiencer of the main verb. The erstwhile nominative is turned into an accusative. The possibly leads to a double accusative construction when there already was an accusative present (3.39 a,b). This diathesis can be used with all verbs that can be experienced as an observer. Note that these verbs of perception can also be used with an explicit dass complement clause (3.39 c), but such constructions are not coherent, and thus no diatheses.

3.10.10 Opiniativ (wissen/glauben/sehen/finden + Partizip)

[3.48] The opiniativ (full discussion in Section 9.6 and subsequent sections) is constructed with one of the light verbs wissen/glauben/sehen/finden with a participle. Applied to an patientive intransitive verb like einschlafen ‘to fall asleep’ it adds an opinionator who believes with more or less certainty (depending on the light verb that is used) whether the einschlafen has occurred or not. The original nominative is changed into an accusative.

3.11 Novative-with-demotion diatheses [ø › sbj › adj]

3.11.1 Transitiv Opiniativ (wissen/glauben/sehen/finden + Partizip)

[3.49] The transitiv opiniativ (full discussion in Section 9.6.5 and subsequent sections) is the same construction as the previous Opiniativ (see Section 3.10.10) but applied to transitive verbs. However, I have included this as a separate diathesis because it shows a rather different role-remapping. When used with a transitive verb like aufheben ‘to preserve’ (3.41 a) the erstwhile nominative Archiv ‘archive’ is demoted to a prepositional adjunct or completely left out (3.41 b). The accusative Nachlass ‘inheritance’ remains unchanged.

[3.50] This Transitiv Opiniativ can of course easily be united with the previous Opiniativ into a single diathesis by noticing, for example, that both can be rephrased with a complement clause with sein and a participle, compare (3.40 b) and (3.41 b). However, this implies that when both Opiniativ diatheses are united, then the sein-Perfekt in (8.13 b), see Section 3.24.2, and the Zustandspassiv in (3.41 b), see Section 3.7.4, have to be united as well (there is a perfect parallelism here). Now, there is nothing against this second unification (see Section 9.2.7 for a discussion), but exactly this point has been rather controversially discussed in the German grammatical literature. So either both are unified, or both are separated. Because I have separated the Zustandspassiv and the sein-Perfekt in this summary, I consequently also separate the two Opiniativ diatheses.

3.11.2 Passivkausativ (lassen + Infinitiv)

[3.51] The passivkausativ (full discussion in Section 10.6.1) can be see as a variant of the Permissivkausativ (see Section 3.10.4). Both use the lassen + Infinitiv construction to add a new causer to the sentence. Additionally, in a Passivkausativ (3.42 b) the original nominative is demoted to a prepositional phrase (or it is left out completely).

— Diatheses without remapping of the subject —

3.12 Antipassive diatheses [obj › adj]

3.12.1 Akkusativ Antipassiv

[3.52] The unmarked akkusativ antipassiv (full discussion in Section 5.7.6 and subsequent sections) is a diathesis in which an accusative argument alternates with a prepositional phrase. This typically occurs without any overt marking other than the antipassive alternation itself. For example, the verb schießen ‘to shoot’ can be used both with an accusative and with an auf prepositional phrase (3.43 a). The semantic effect of this diathesis is that the object is less affected when marked as a prepositional phrase. In some instances, like with glauben an ‘to believe in’ (3.43 b) the prepositional phrase is a governed preposition (see Section 5.7.10).

3.12.2 Dativ Antipassiv

[3.53] The unmarked dativ antipassiv (full discussion in Section 5.7.8 and subsequent sections) is a diathesis in which a dative argument alternates with a prepositional phrase. In a few instances this is attested with a dative without accusative, like with weichen ‘to give way’ (3.44 a). More widespread this diathesis is found with verbs like berichten ‘to report’ (3.44 b) that allow for both an accusative and dative argument.

3.12.3 Reflexiv Antipassiv

[3.54] The reflexiv antipassiv (full discussion in Section 6.7.5) is an antipassive in which additionally a reflexive pronoun is added. For example, the verb beklagen ‘to lament’ (3.45) has a lamented object role Lärm ‘noise’ in the accusative (3.45 a) or in a prepositional phrase with über (3.45 b). The reflexive pronoun in (3.45 b) is not a self-inflicting reflexive, i.e. the lamenting is not about oneself. These reflexive antipassives always have governed prepositional phrases (3.45 c).

3.12.4 Reziprokativ

[3.55] The reziprokativ (full discussion in Section 6.7.4) is a special kind of antipassive in which an accusative is replaced by a mit prepositional phrase and additionally a reflexive pronoun is added, as shown for the verb treffen ‘to meet’ in (3.46). This reflexive pronoun does not have self-inflicting reference, i.e. the meeting is not with oneself. Semantically this diathesis is found with some verbs that can be construed as either reciprocal or non-reciprocal. For example, the verb treffen ‘to meet’ can be used without reflexive pronoun (3.46 a) meaning something like ‘to bump into someone’, while with a reflexive pronoun the meaning is clearly reciprocal ‘to meet’ (3.46 b).

3.13 Applicative diatheses [adj › obj]

3.13.1 Präverb Applikativ

[3.56] The präverb applikativ (full discussion in Section 7.8.10 and subsequent sections) is an alternation in which a prepositional phrase is turned into an accusative through the addition of a preverb. For example, the alternation from steigen to besteigen ‘to climb’ additionally induces a change from the preposition auf to an accusative (3.47 a,b). There is a wide variety in preverbs (both Verbpräfixe and Verbpartikel) and a wide variety of prepositions that show such a diathesis. The prepositional phrases that are turned into an accusative can also be governed prepositions like an together with the verb arbeiten ‘to work’ (3.47 c), which turns into an accusative with erarbeiten ‘to work something out’ (see Section 7.8.11). A closely related Präverb Transitiv Applikativ diathesis is attested with transitive verbs (see Section 3.19.2).

3.13.2 Adverb Applikativ

[3.57] The adverb applikativ (full discussion in Section 8.8.2) is also an alternation that turns a prepositional phrase into an accusative, though in this instance the diathesis is induces by a adverbial, like leer ‘empty’ or gesund ‘healthy’. When used with an intransitive verb like fischen ‘to fish’ (3.48 a) the prepositional phrase is turned into an accusative. The effect of this diathesis is that the new accusative Teich ‘pond’ is in the state described by the adverbial leer as a result of the verbal action fischen (3.48 b). This diathesis is also attested with governed prepositions, like with the verb beten für ‘to pray for’ (3.48 c,d). A related Adverb Vollapplikativ diathesis is attested with transitive verbs (see Section 3.19.3).

3.13.3 Präverb Dativ Applikativ

[3.58] The präverb dativ applikativ (full discussion in Section 7.8.16 and subsequent sections) is an alternation in which the prepositional phrase is turned into a dative (as opposed to an accusative as in Section 3.13.1). Although the prepositions in this diathesis are often strongly lexicalised, like stammen aus ‘originate from’ (3.49 a), they do not allow for the daraus, dass… reformulation that is considered definitional here for them to be governed prepositions (3.49 c).

3.13.4 Pertinenzdativ

[3.59] The pertinenzdativ (full discussion in Section 4.8.3 and subsequent sections) is a dative that is inherently the possessor of another lexical role. The term pertinenz (from lat. pertinere ‘to belong to’) was proposed by Polenz (1969: 160ff.)¹¹ for this phenomenon and for the closely connected Ortspertinenzdativ as discussed in the next section. I have extended the usage of this term to various other diatheses that involve a possessor of another role, see Pertinenzpassiv (Section 3.7.7), Pertinenzinversiv (Section 3.9.2) and Pertinenzakkusativ (Section 3.19.4). The Pertinenzdativ is attested both for the possessor of a nominative subject of intransitives (3.50 a) and for the possessor of the accusative object of transitives (3.50 b). As for any Pertinenz-relation, it is crucial that the dative is necessarily the possessor of another lexical role.

3.13.5 Ortspertinenzdativ

[3.60] The ortspertinenzdativ (full discussion in Section 5.8.10 and subsequent sections) is closely connected to the previous Pertinenzdativ (Section 3.13.4). The dative in (3.51) is likewise obligatorily a possessor of another lexical role, though in this diathesis this other role is an obligatory location. For example, the verb hängen, ‘to hang’ (3.51 a) necessarily needs a location where the hanging is taking place. The possessor of this location can be replaced by a dative. Besides being an inherent argument of a verb, the obligatory location can also be included by a resultative diathesis (e.g. Section 3.16.2). For example, the verb wehen ‘to blow (of wind)’ can be used resultatively with an obligatory location in meinem Gesicht (3.51 b). The possessor of this location can subsequently be turned into a dative.

3.13.6 Benefaktivdativ

[3.61] The benefaktivdativ (full discussion in Section 5.8.9) is a dative that alternates with a für prepositional phrase. For example with the verb kochen ‘to cook’ the beneficiary of the cooking can be expressed with a für prepositional phrase (3.52 a) or with a dative (3.52 b). Not all beneficiary für phrases can be turned into a dative. The Benefaktivdativ is only attested with transitive verbs. With intransitive like arbeiten ‘to work’ a für beneficiary is possible (3.52 c), but a dative is not (3.52 d).

3.14 Objective diatheses [ø › obj]

3.14.1 Resultatakkusativ

[3.62] The unmarked resultatakkusativ (full discussion in Section 4.8.1) is highly similar to the optionaler akkusativ diathesis (Section 3.15.1). In both diatheses, the same verb can be used both with and without an accusative argument. The special characteristics of verbs like singen ‘to sing’ (3.53) is that they are (a) basically intransitive and (b) the accusative represents the result of the intransitive action. The difference between an unmarked added accusative and an unmarked dropped accusative is arguably small, and it remains to be seen whether this separation can be backed up by further distinguishing grammatical characteristics.

3.14.2 Präverb Akkusativ

[3.63] The präverb akkusativ (full discussion in Section 7.8.1 and subsequent sections) is a diathesis in which the addition of a preverb leads to an accusative argument. For example, the diathesis from zaubern ‘to perform magic’ to verzaubern ‘to enchant’ (3.54) adds a completely new role in the accusative.

3.14.3 Präverb Dativ

[3.64] The präverb dativ is similar to the previous Präverb Akkusativ in that the addition of the preverb also induces a new role, in this diathesis marked with a dative case. This diathesis is attested both with intransitive verbs like gehen ‘to walk’ and preverbal entgehen ‘to evade’ (3.55 a), full discussion in Section 7.8.5, and with transitive verbs like lesen ‘to read’ and the preverbal vorlesen ‘to read out’ (3.55 b), full discussion in Section 7.8.6.

3.14.4 Präverb Reflexiv Akkusativ

[3.65] The präverb reflexiv akkusativ (full discussion in Section 7.8.7) is a special variant of an objective diathesis in that the addition of the preverb leads to a new accusative argument, but also needs an obligatory reflexive pronoun. The new accusative role is semantically the result of the action of the main verb, which is similar to the Resultatakkusativ (Section 3.14.1), but different from the präverb akkusativ (Section 3.14.2). For example, the diathesis from tanzen ‘to dance’ to antanzen ‘to incur from dancing’ (3.56) adds the incurrence Muskelkater ‘sore muscles’ and a reflexive pronoun.

3.15 Deobjective diatheses [obj › ø]

3.15.1 Optionaler Akkusativ

[3.66] An unmarked optionaler akkusativ (full discussion in Section 4.7.1) is a diathesis in which an accusative object can be left out without any further change in the construction. This is for example attested with the verb stören ‘to disturb’ (3.57). Note that when the accusative object of a verb allows for an antipassive diathesis (Section 3.12.1), then the verb should not also be included in this Optionaler Akkusativ diathesis. Also, there is a more widespread drop of an accusative that leads to an action-oriented focus, introduced below as the Aktionsfokus diathesis (Section 3.15.3). Verbs with such a diathesis should not also be included here. There is also a highly similar resultatakkusativ diathesis (Section 3.14.1) that should be distinguished. Once all those diatheses are separated, there turn out to be relatively few verbs with Optionaler Akkusativ, mainly verbs that can be interpreted both as something you can do, as well as something you can be.

3.15.2 Optionaler Dativ

[3.67] The unmarked optionaler dativ, i.e. the dropping of a dative argument without any further change in the construction, is both attested with nominative-dative verbs like entkommen ‘to get away’ (3.58 a), full discussion in Section 4.7.4, and with nominative-accusative-dative verbs like erzählen ‘to tell’ (3.58 b), full discussion in Section 4.7.5. Like with Optionaler Akkusativ (Section 3.15.1), datives that allow for a dative antipassive (Section 3.12.2) should not also be included here.

3.15.3 Aktionsfokus

[3.68] The aktionsfokus (full discussion in Section 8.7.1) is a widespread diathesis in which object arguments can be left out to put the focus on the action of the verb itselft. For example, a transitive verb like lesen ‘to read’ (3.59 a) can be used without an object as an answer to the question ‘what is she doing right now?’ (3.59 b). Such dropped objects are even more widespread in combination with manner adverbials (3.59 c).

3.15.4 Endoreflexiv

[3.69] The Endoreflexiv (full discussion in Section 6.7.1 and subsequent sections) is a special kind of object drop in which a reflexive pronoun is added. Such a diathesis looks superficially very similar to a regular self-inflicting reflexive (Section 3.22.1), but there is a crucial semantic difference. In a self-inflicting reflexive (e.g. ‘he washes himself’) the agent is doing something to him/herself. In contrast, an Endoreflexiv describes an action that is performed with the body of the agent, not to the body of the agent. For example, the verb äußern ‘to remark’ (5.90 a) can be used with a reflexive pronoun and without accusative object in the meaning of ‘to express oneself’ (3.60 b).

3.15.5 Präverb Endoreflexiv

[3.70] The präverb endoreflexiv (full discussion in Section 7.7.3) is similar to the previous Endoreflexiv (Section 3.15.4) but with the addition of a preverb. For example, the verb wählen ‘to choose/to dial’ shows a diathesis with sich verwählen ‘to misdial’ (3.61 a) in which the accusative object is dropped. There are also a few very special endoreflexive verbs in which an adverbial is necessary instead of a preverb, for example fühlen ‘to feel’ (3.61 b), see Section 8.7.2.

3.16 Locative diatheses [ø › pbj]

3.16.1 Bewegungsart

[3.71] The bewegungsart diathesis (full discussion in Section 5.8.2 and subsequent sections) is a diathesis that is specifically attested with verbs of movement like tanzen ‘to dance’ (3.62). Movement verbs allow for both a haben and a sein perfect, but there is a crucial difference between these two options. With sein in the perfect there is an additional directional prepositional necessary (3.62 b,c). Semantically, this construction expresses a movement, in which the main lexical verb designates the kind of movement.

3.16.2 Verursachte Bewegung

[3.72] The verursachte bewegung diathesis is attested in two variants. With intransitive verbs (full discussion in Section 5.8.4 and subsequent sections) like schwitzen ‘to sweat’ (3.63 a) this diathesis adds both an accusative and an obligatory movement phrase. Semantically, this diathesis expresses that the verb causes the movement of the new object role. With transitive verbs (full discussion in Section 5.8.5) like befehlen ‘to command’ the effect is similar (3.63 b). With a movement prepositional phrase the semantic effect is that the verb causes the object to move.

3.16.3 Ergänzende Wirkung

[3.73] The ergänzende wirkung diathesis (full discussion in Section 5.8.6) expresses the result of performing the main verb. For example, a transitive verb like machen ‘to make’ can either take an object that is made (3.64 a) or an object that changed into something else (3.64 b). The name Ergänzende Wirkung originates in the influential educational grammatical work of Karl Ferdinand Becker (Becker 1833: 81) almost 200 years ago.

3.17 Delocative diatheses [pbj › ø]

3.17.1 Präverb Antilokativ

[3.74] The präverb antilokativ (full discussion in Section 7.7.9 and subsequent sections) is a diathesis in which an obligatory location loses its obligatoriness by adding a preverb. For example, the diathesis between steigen aus and aussteigen ‘to get out’ (3.65) shows a small but crucial difference in that the prepositional phrase aus dem Auto loses its obligatory status.

3.17.2 Adverb Antilokativ

[3.75] The adverb antilokativ (full discussion in Section 8.7.4 and subsequent sections) is a parallel diathesis compared to the previous Präverb Antilokativ (Section 3.17.1). Instead of adding a preverb, this diathesis adds an obligatory resultative adverb, like los ‘loose’. The diathesis between binden ‘to tie’ and losbinden ‘to untie’ removes the obligatory status of the locative prepositional phrase.

3.18 Governed preposition change [pbj › pbj]

3.18.1 Reflexiv verursachte Bewegung

[3.76] The reflexiv verursachte bewegung (full discussion in Section 6.9.4) is a special variant of the Verursachte Bewegung (Section 3.16.2). In this diathesis, a verb like träumen von ‘to dream’ that takes a governed prepositional phrase (3.67 a,b) can alternatively be used with a reflexive pronoun (3.67 c). With the reflexive pronoun there is an obligatory movement phrase necessary instead of the governed prepositional phrase (3.67 d). Semantically, this construction describes an (imaginary) movement that is caused by the main verb.

3.19 Chained applicative diatheses [adj › obj › adj]

3.19.1 Vollapplikativ

[3.77] The unmarked vollapplikativ (full discussion in Section 5.9.2) is an extended version of an applicative. More precise, it is a combination of an applicative and a subsequent antipassive. For example, the verb füllen ‘to fill’ has two object roles: (i) the filled object Flasche ‘bottle’ and (ii) the filling substance Schnaps ‘liquor’. Both roles alternate between a prepositional phrase and an accusative (3.68 a,b). There appears to be an asymmetry in that the filling substance cannot be used as an accusative without mentioning the filled object (3.68 c), while the reverse is possible (3.68 d). This asymmetry is also attested in the closely related Präverb Vollpplikativ (see Section 3.19.2). The construction with the filled object as accusative (3.68 b,d) is similar to the preverbal befüllen. The asymmetry indicates that this diathesis is basically an unmarked applicative (cf. Section 3.13.1), but applied to transitive verbs. The applicative changes a prepositional phrase into an accusative and, as a consequence, any accusative already present is demoted like an antipassive.

3.19.2 Präverb Vollapplikativ

[3.78] The präverb vollapplikativ (full discussion in Section 7.9.3) is similar to the previous unmarked Vollpplikativ, combining an applicative and an antipassive diathesis. Noteworthy, there appear to be only two antipassive strategies, using the prepositions mit and in, respectively. For example, with the diathesis from schreiben ‘to write’ to beschreiben ‘to write on’ (3.69 a) the written text Buchstaben ‘letters’ changes from an accusative to a mit prepositional phrase. Differently, with the diathesis from graben ‘to dig’ to begraben ‘to bury’ the dug entity Loch ‘hole’ changes from an accusative to an in prepositional phrase. Both these prepositional phrases can be left unexpressed.

[3.79] In contrast to the few antipassive options, there is a wide variety of applicative strategies attested, i.e. many different prepositions can be promoted to accusative (see Section 7.9.3 for all known examples). This asymmetry indicates that any Vollapplikativ is basically an applicative, but applied to verbs that already have an accusative argument. The German language disprefers multiple arguments with the same case, so the erstwhile accusative is demoted as another role is promoted to accusative. This corollary demotion is reminiscent of subject demotion with passives.

3.19.3 Adverb Vollapplikativ

[3.80] The adverb vollapplikativ (full discussion in Section 8.9.1) is closely related to the previous Präverb Vollapplikativ (see Section 3.19.2), though marked with an adverb instead of a preverb. It mainly seems to occur with the adverb voll ‘full’ (3.70 a), for example turning the verb pumpen ‘to pump’ into vollpumpen ‘to pump full’. Just as in the previous Vollpplikativ diatheses, the role Luft ‘air’ will be demoted to a mit prepositional phrase (or can be left out completely). With the adverb leer ‘empty’ (3.70 b) the erstwhile object cannot be retained as a prepositional phrase, see Section 8.7.8.

3.19.4 Pertinenzakkusativ

[3.81] The pertinenzakkusativ (full discussion in Section 5.8.12) is an accusative that alternates with a possessor of another accusative. A verb like bewundern ‘to admire’ marks the admired thing, e.g. Ehrlichkeit ‘honesty’ as an accusative (3.71 a). After the diathesis, the possessor of this accusative seine ‘his’ is raised to accusative ihn ‘him’ (3.71 b), at the same time demoting the admired thing to a governed prepositional object with für (3.71 c).

3.20 Chained objective diatheses [ø › obj › pbj]

3.20.1 Resultativ

[3.82] The unmarked resultativ (full discussion in Section 5.8.7 and subsequent sections) is a chained diathesis. A new accusative object is introduced (‘objective’) and the erstwhile object is demoted to a prepositional phrase (‘antipassive’). However, these two remappings are tightly intertwined and have to occur together. Semantically, the effect is describing the result of an action and the diathesis is highly similar to the Verursachte Bewegung diathesis (Section 3.16.2), but the remapping of roles is crucially different as there is no chained remapping in the latter.

[3.83] An example is shown in (3.72) with the verb brechen ‘to break’. This verb can be used with an accusative argument describing the role of the broken thing, here Felsen ‘rock’ (3.72 a). Alternatively, a different role can be marked with an accusative, namely the result of the breaking, here Loch ‘hole’ (3.72 b). In this usage, a location is obligatory present in the sentence, here in den Felsen ‘in the rock’ (3.72 b,c). This location represents the place at which the resulting of the breaking is found, so this location is the broken thing itself.

3.21 Chained deobjective diatheses [pbj › obj › ø]

3.21.1 Präverb Antiresultativ

[3.84] The präverb antiresultativ (full discussion in Section 7.7.12) is the reverse of the previous Resultativ (Section 3.20.1). Verbs like pressen ‘to squeeze’ (3.73 a) obligatorily take an accusative result, here Saft ‘juice’, and a prepositional object from which the result originates, here aus der Zitrone ‘from the citron’ (3.73 b). With a preverb auspressen ‘to squeeze’ (3.73 c) the accusative result is dropped (‘deobjective’) and the originating prepositional object from which the result was produced is turned into a new accusative role (‘applicative’). However, these two remappings are tightly intertwined and can only be used together. Semantically, there is a close connection to the Präverb Antilokativ diathesis (Section 3.17.1), though there is no chained remapping in the latter.

— Epitheses without remapping —

3.22 Reflexive epitheses

3.22.1 Selbstbezogener Reflexiv

[3.85] (full discussion in Section 6.4.5 and subsequent sections)

3.22.2 Reziprok

[3.86] (full discussion in Section 6.4.14 and subsequent sections)

3.22.3 Freier Reflexiv

[3.87] (full discussion in Section 6.4.1 and subsequent sections)

3.23 Preverb/adverb epitheses

3.23.1 Nicht-strukturelles Präverb

[3.88] (full discussion in Section 7.4.1 and subsequent sections)

3.23.2 Patientives Präverb

[3.89] (full discussion in Section 7.4.5 and subsequent sections)

3.23.3 Reflexiv Präverb

[3.90] (full discussion in Section 7.4.7 and subsequent sections)

3.23.4 Reflexiv Adverb

[3.91] (full discussion in Section 8.4.1 and subsequent sections)

3.24 Participle epitheses

3.24.1 Prozessperfekt (haben + Partizip)

[3.92] (full discussion in Section 9.4.1 and subsequent sections)

3.24.2 Zustandsperfekt (sein + Partizip)

[3.93] (full discussion in Section 9.4.2 and subsequent sections)

3.24.3 Intransitiv Kontinuativperfekt (bleiben + Partizip)

[3.94] (full discussion in Section 9.4.11)

3.24.4 Transitiv Kontinuativperfekt (halten/lassen + Partizip)

[3.95] (full discussion in Section 9.4.12)

3.24.5 Apparitivperfekt (aussehen/(er)scheinen/wirken + Partizip)

[3.96] (full discussion in Section 9.4.10). see also apparitivantikausativ (see Section 3.6.6)

3.24.6 Erfolgsperfekt (bekommen/kriegen + Partizip)

[3.97] (full discussion in Section 9.4.13)

3.24.7 Origobewegung (kommen + Partizip)

[3.98] (full discussion in Section 9.4.15)

3.25 Infinitive epitheses

3.25.1 Modalverben

[3.99] (full discussion in Section 10.4.1 and subsequent sections) dürfen/können/mögen/möchten/müssen/sollen/wollen + Infinitiv, also werden/brauchen

3.25.2 Absentiv (sein/gehen/fahren/kommen + Infinitiv)

[3.100] (full discussion in Section 10.4.4 and subsequent sections)

3.25.3 Progressiv (tun + Infinitive)

[3.101] (full discussion in Section 10.4.7)

3.25.4 Kontinuativ (bleiben + Infinitiv)

[3.102] (full discussion in Section 10.4.4)

3.25.5 Exemptiv (haben + leicht/gut + Infinitiv)

[3.103] (full discussion in Section 10.4.9) with obligatory adverbial!

3.26 Infinitive epitheses with zu/zum/am

3.26.1 Obligativ-zu-infinitiv (haben + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.104] (full discussion in Section 11.4.1) “können”

3.26.2 Potentialis-zu-infinitiv (wissen + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.105] (full discussion in Section 11.4.2) “müssen”

3.26.3 Patiens-zu-infinitiv (kommen + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.106] (full discussion in Section 11.4.6) “es passierte”

3.26.4 Rezipienten-zu-infinitiv (bekommen + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.107] (full discussion in Section 11.4.7)

3.26.5 Erscheinungsinfinitiv (scheinen + zu + Infinitiv)

[3.108] (full discussion in Section 11.4.3)

3.26.6 (gehen/kommen/fahren + zum + Infinitiv)

[3.109] (full discussion in Section 12.4.2)

3.26.7 Verlaufsform (sein + am + Infinitiv)

[3.110] (full discussion in Section 12.4.1)

3.27 Summary of widespread light verbs

[3.111] The light verbs listed in Table 3.2 occur in more than one derived clause construction. Shown in the table is whether these constructions induce epithesis (E) or diathesis (D).

4 Case-marking alternations

4.1 Introduction

[4.1] Diathesis typically involves variation in the marking of case as governed by the verb, possibly including alternations between case marked arguments and adpositional phrases. The notion of ‘flagging’ was (re)introduced in Haspelmath (2005: 2) as a cover term to capture the intuition that case marking and adpositional marking express very similar functions in linguistic marking. The first two data chapters in this book discuss exactly those kind of marking, viz. case and adpositional marking as governed by a verb. This chapter discusses diatheses involving case-marked constituents, and the next chapter focusses on governed prepositional constituents.

[4.2] Covert case-marking diatheses are characterised by one and the same verb that can be used with different case-marked roles and, crucially, no other overt marking of the different constructions. Such alternations include, for example, possessor raising like (4.1 a) or anticausative alternations like (4.1 b).

[4.3] The crucial (and somewhat problematic) aspect of such alternations is that there is no formal indication of the presence of a diathesis except for the marking of the arguments themselves. The prototypical diathesis (as defined Section 1.2) includes some overt linguistic marking that indicates that a diathesis has taken place (i.e. some affix, particle, light verb, or other morphosyntactic means). And indeed, all diatheses that will be discussed in subsequent chapters will be of that kind. In contrast, the diatheses discussed in this chapter and the next chapter are ‘covert’ alternations, or ‘zero marked’ alternations, in that there is no other indication of a diathesis, except for the marking of the arguments themselves (Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019 introduce the term “covert” diathesis for this). The problem with such covert diatheses is that there is no overt directionality in the alternation – there is no way to distinguish between a base form and a derived form. Both alternants have an equal status as far as the morphosyntax is concerned. I have attempted to infer a direction based on parallels to other diatheses.

[4.4] The unmarked nature of covert diatheses implies that there is some slight redundancy and fuzziness in presentation. This redundancy arises because, for example, when a verb occurs in four different constructions, then there are logically six different alternations (viz. 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4). I have nonetheless decided to approach the descriptive organisation in this chapter from the perspective of such pairwise alternations, because (i) it highlights the possible connections attested between construction, and (ii) very many verbs appear only to occur in just one or two alternations anyway (with only a smaller subset of verbs appearing across many different constructions).

[4.5] There are seven local groups of diatheses that seem prominent enough to be given a German name. I propose the following names for these:

• [sbj › ø] verbativ (see Section 4.5.1 ff.)
• [obj › sbj › ø] antikausativ (see Section 4.5.5 ff.)
• [ø › sbj › obj] kausativ (see Section 4.6.2 ff.)
• [ø › obj] resultatakkusativ (see Section 4.8.1)
• [adj › obj] pertinenzdativ (see Section 4.8.3 ff.)
• [obj › ø] optionaler akkusativ (see Section 4.7.1 ff.)
• [obj › ø] optionaler dativ (see Section 4.7.4 ff.)

4.2 Delimiting case-marked arguments

4.2.1 Identifying case marking

[4.6] The German case marking system is rather straightforward. Noun phrases in German occur in one of four case forms. There are various syncretisms in the case paradigm, which conceal the identity of the case in many sentences. For this reason, I will attempt to use first/second person singular pronouns or masculine singular nouns in constructed examples. These forms can easily be unambiguously identified, as shown in Table 4.1.

[4.7] Basically, almost all case-marked constituents are governed arguments. Yet, there are a few situations (to be discussed in detail below) in which overtly case-marked constituents are not arguments (or, alternatively, a very special type of arguments): quantified objects (4.2 a), named objects (4.2 b), cognate objects (4.2 c), lexicalised noun-verb combinations (4.2 d) and adnominal constituents (4.2 e).

4.2.2 Quantified object

[4.8] A special kind of arguments are quantified objects (cf. ‘Mensuralergänzung’, Eroms 2000: 203-204), exemplified in (4.3 a-e). Quantified objects are overtly marked accusative objects that often contain numerals, like in (4.3 d) or (4.3 e), in which einen is not an article, but the numeral one. Except for numerals, the quantification can also be instantiated by adjectives (e.g. ganzen in (4.3 a)), indefinites (e.g. jeden in (4.3 b)) or measure phrases (e.g. zu laut in (4.3 c)).

[4.9] These quantified constituents are not governed arguments. First, they can easily be left out (all verbs in the examples are typical intransitive verbs). Second, and more importantly, they cannot be replaced by a pronoun nor be questioned by a question pronoun (viz. wen/was). Instead, they are questioned by adverbial interrogative words as listed at the examples above, indicating that the quantified constituents are adverbial phrases, not governed arguments. Still, there are a few verbs that obligatorily need such a quantified object. These will be discussed in Section 4.3.9.

4.2.3 Named objects

[4.10] A special group of verbs can be used to performatively name persons or things. As proper names, such arguments are arguably without case in standard German (4.4 a), but with regular nouns these phrases are clearly accusatives (4.4 b). The effect are constructions with two accusative arguments. These arguments are normally questioned by the manner interrogative wie ‘how’, though in some situations was ‘what’ seems possible (4.4 c). The small group of verbs that obligatorily takes such arguments will be discussed in Section 4.3.10.

4.2.4 Cognate objects

[4.11] There is a special construction available for many verbs to add an object that is a nominalisation of the verb itself, exemplified here in (4.5 a,b).

[4.12] This construction is known as a ‘cognate object’ construction (e.g. Levin 1993: 95-96), because the object is etymologically related to the verb. In many cases, this cognate object is simply a zero nominalisation (‘conversion’) of the verb stem (e.g. schlafen - der Schlaf, ‘to sleep - the sleep’), but in some cases different nominalisations like the infinitive are used (e.g. lächeln - das Lächeln, ‘to smile - the smile’).

[4.13] Examples like (4.5 a,b) seem to suggest that intransitive verbs like schlafen ‘to sleep’ and träumen ‘to dream’ allow for accusative arguments. However, besides these cognate objects there are no other accusative arguments allowed with these verbs. Further, such cognate arguments seem to be theoretically possible for all verbs, though often quite some imagination is needed to find a suitable context to use verb and nominalised verb together.

[4.14] Because of their special status, such cognate object nominalisations are not counted as regular arguments. However, nominalisations are an interesting aspect of diathesis in itself and will be discussed extensively in Chapter 14.

4.2.5 Lexicalised noun-verb combinations

[4.15] There is a common pattern in German in which nouns are combined with a verb, like eislaufen ‘ice skating’. Such constructions are highly reminiscent of the typologically widespread process of noun incorporation. However, in German such noun incorporation only occurs with individual lexeme combinations, so they are probably better interpreted as grammaticalised noun-verb collocations (Eisenberg 2013: 324-327; Gallmann 1999; 2015).

[4.16] Most such combinations are written as separate words in German orthography, e.g. Wache stehen ‘stand guard’, so they might look like nominal arguments. However, they normally do not allow for any determiners or modifiers (4.6 a). Only very few fixed combinations allow for an adjective (4.6 b) and/or a determiner (4.6 c).

[4.17] The typical examples like Blut ‘blood’ in (4.6 a) do not show much indication of case-marking. It is clearly not a genitive (because then it should have been Blutes), but nominative, dative or accusative are all possible. The few examples with determiners and/or adjectives seem to indicate that these constituents are accusatives. However, even in undoubtedly accusative examples like (4.6 c) the accusative is not an argument, because it is strange (if not completely ungrammatical) to pronominalise (4.7 a) or question (4.7 b) this accusative. Just like cognate objects, such nouns in lexicalised noun-verb combinations are not arguments.

4.2.6 Adnominal case-marked constituents

[4.18] Semantically, adnominal constituents are easily identified as modifiers inside a noun phrase. However, there is no formal difference between adnominal and sentential case-marked constituents, leading possibly to ambiguous sentences like (4.8 a). In this sentence, both the accusative constituent for the accusee den Verdächtigen and the genitive constituent for the accusation des Diebstahls can be read as arguments being governed by the verb beschuldigen ‘to accuse’ (4.8 b). Alternatively, these two constituents can be interpreted as a single complex noun phrase, as can be seen by the possibility to add a further constituent describing a different accusation (4.8 c). Adnominal constituents are (obviously) not arguments.

4.3 Deponent verbs without alternations

[4.19] Before delving into the actual alternations, I will first present an inventory of verbs that do not show alternation as far as flagging is concerned. These verbs can, and many will, occur in other diatheses as discussed in subsequent chapters, but for the alternations discussed in this chapter (on case-marked arguments) and the next chapter (on prepositional arguments) these verbs are invariable. The most interesting insight from building this collection is that it is not easy at all to find verbs that do not allow for at least some kind of flagging variation.

— Regular case-marked arguments—

4.3.1 [ – ] No arguments

[4.20] Some verbs do not need any argument at all, not even a nominative subject. These include the well-known weather verbs like schneien ‘to snow’ (4.9 a). However, most weather verb actually allow for some nominative subjects as well (4.9 b), see Section 4.6.1, or accusative arguments (4.9 c), see Section 4.8.2. There do not seem to be any verbs that only allow for a constructions without any arguments.

4.3.2 [ N ] Nominative

[4.21] Some verbs only allow a Nominative argument, which necessarily also shows agreement with the finite verb. Such verbs are traditionally called ‘intransitive’. The verbs discussed in this section are strictly intransitive, in that they do not allow for any other case marked arguments or governed prepositions (see Section 5.2). Intransitive verbs, of course, allow for additional non-governed prepositional phrases, e.g. locational (4.10 a) or temporal phrases (4.10 b), instrumental/comitative phrases with mit (4.10 c,d), or beneficiary/goal phrases with für (4.10 e,f).

[4.22] An attempt has been made below to classify the examples of strictly intransitive verbs into broad semantic categories. However, these categories are in no way intended as definitional for the kind of verbs allowed in this class. Yet, the semantic categories attested give a good indication of the kind of verbs that tend to be strictly intransitive. Note that this list is in no way intended to be exhaustive, but only illustrative.

[4.23] Attested Verbs

• Movement: ankommen, ausgehen, eintreffen, rasen (schnell bewegen), reisen, untergehen, verreisen, verschwinden, schlendern, spazieren
• Bodily Functions: niesen, pinkeln, brechen (übergeben), husten
• Sleeping: aufstehen, aufwachen, einschlafen
• Living: ausziehen, einziehen, umziehen, wegziehen
• Natural Process: ertrinken, scheinen, sprießen, wachsen, schrumpfen
• Noun incorporation: fernsehen, autofahren, seiltanzen, bergsteigen, kopfrechnen, notlanden, brustschwimmen, bruchrechnen, eislaufen, kopfstehen, probefahren, radfahren, windsurfen
• Various: desertieren, enden, hupen, klingen

[4.24] Notes

[4.25] Some of the ‘living’ verbs allow for accusative arguments in non-living related meanings.

4.3.3 [ NA ] Nominative + accusative

[4.26] The verbs in this class are strict transitives: they need a nominative subject argument and an additional accusative argument. Further arguments are not allowed, and no governed prepositions are allowed either. It turns out that this group is not very large, because very many verbs allow for dative arguments (traditionally called ‘free’ datives, but that term will be ignored here) or alternations with governed prepositions. For example, an apparently typical transitive verb like bauen ‘to build’ allows for a dative to mark the beneficiary of the building, as in Ich baue dir ein Haus ‘I will build a house for you’. Conversely, there are also many apparently typical transitive verbs that can just as well be used without accusative object, including well-known ambitransitive verbs like essen ‘to eat’. Still, the current set of verbs attested for this class can easily be extended and is not at all intended to be complete.

[4.27] Verbprefixes and verbparticles (see Chapter 7) regularly induce an applicative alternation and subsequently often lexicalise, leading to transitive verbs (4.12 a,b).

[4.28] The number of monomorphemic ‘strictly’ transitive verbs seems to be very limited. I could not find any obvious semantic categorisation of these verbs, so they are simply presented in alphabetical order here.

[4.29] Attested Verbs

• Monomorphemic: bilden, brauchen, finden, freuen, grüßen, kennen, kriegen, merken, mögen, pflegen, tanken, wecken, wundern
• Verbpräfixes/particles: abmessen, abschreiten, abwiegen, angehen, ansehen, ansetzen, begrüßen, beängstigen, behalten, bekommen, beruhigen, beschäftigen, darstellen, entschuldigen, erreichen, umfassen, unterbrechen, verachten, verletzen, verschwenden, zerreißen, zerstören

[4.30] Examples

• Die Schüler bilden eine Klasse.
• Ich brauche einen Kaffee.
• Der frische Kaffee freut mich.
• Ich merke den Fehler zu spät.
• Das Polizeiauto vor der Tür wundert ihn.
• Ich trenne die Gruppe.
• Ich entschuldige dich (bei der Chorprobe).
• Ich setze das Messer an
• Ich messe den Abstand ab.
• Ich schreite den roten Teppich ab.
• Ich wiege den Reis ab.
• Ich tanke Benzin.

4.3.4 [ ND ] Nominative + dative

[4.31] The verbs in this class need both a nominative subject argument and a second dative argument. Both arguments cannot be dropped (except in extremely marked meta-linguistic contexts) and no other case-marked arguments or governed prepositions are possible. I could not find any obvious semantic categorisation of these verbs, so they are simply presented in alphabetical order here.

[4.32] Attested Verbs

• ähneln, ähnlich sein, angehören, antworten, begegnen, beipflichten, bleiben, einfallen, entgegen kommen, entgehen, entsprechen, gefallen, gegenüber treten, gehören, gelten, glauben (vertrauen), gleichen, glücken, imponieren, liegen, missfallen, nacheifern, schaden, stehen, trauen, unterlaufen, unterliegen, unterstehen, verfallen, widerfahren, zufallen, zureden, zustoßen, zuneigen

[4.33] Examples

• Ich gehöre der Gruppe an.
• Ich begegne einer Überraschung.
• Ich bin dem Konservatismus zugeneigt.
• Der Notausgang entspricht den Vorschriften.
• Die Stadt glich einem Trümmerfeld.
• Die Feuchtigkeit schadete den Möbeln.
• Mir gefällt das Buch.
• Mir fällt eine Lösung ein.
• Mir ist ein Fehler unterlaufen.
• Mir ist ein Unrecht widerfahren.
• Diese Geister galten mir.
• Ein Unglück ist mir zugestoßen.
• Die Aufgabe ist mir zugefallen.
• Ich traue der Sache nicht.
• Ich unterstehe einer Behörde.
• Ich unterliege dem Gegner. (‘besiegt werden’)
• Die Mode unterliegt dem Zwang der Zeit. (‘bestimmt werden’)
• Ich glaube dir. (‘vertrauen’)

[4.34] Notes

[4.35] The following verbs also exist as intransitive ‘only nominative’ verbs (see Section 4.3.2), but in a clearly different lexical meanings.

• Mir bleibt nur harte Arbeit. Ich bleibe noch eben.
• Mir gehört die Schreibmaschine. Die Schreibmaschine gehört auf den Tisch.
• Mir liegt diese Sportart. Ich liege am Boden
• Mir steht der Mantel. Ich stehe um die Ecke.
• Der Journalist verfiel dem Alkohol. Das Haus verfiel.

4.3.5 [ NG ] Nominative + genitive

[4.36] There are a few verbs in German that have a genitive argument. These verbs are slowly disappearing from the German language, and many of the verbs that are still around are considered rather old fashioned. It is out of an aim of completeness that these verbs are listed here, as they do not play an important role anymore in the current German language. The verbs listed here need a genitive Argument and there seems to be no possibility for alternations with other case or adpositional marking.

[4.37] Attested Verbs

• entraten, entübrigen, ermangeln, gedenken, harren, Herr werden, walten

[4.38] Examples

• Ich muss leider seiner Mitarbeit entraten. (Meaning like verzichten)
• Die Methode entübrigt des Putzens.
• Der Versuch ermangelt jeglicher Vernunft.
• Ich gedenke der Toten.
• Er harrte seines Schicksals.
• Er wurde des Protestes Herr.
• Er waltet seines Amtes.

4.3.6 [ NAD ] Nominative + accusative + dative

[4.39] This class consists of the classical ditransitive verbs with an obligatory nominative, accusative and dative argument. It turns out to be extremely hard to find good examples of verbs that, at least in the large majority of its uses, always overtly shows all three arguments. Most apparent ditransitive verbs, like geben ‘to give’, easily allow for the dative to be dropped or replaced by a prepositional phrase (for the verb geben, see De Vaere, De Cuypere & Willems 2018 for an in-depth study). The few remaining obligatorily ditransitive verbs seem to be semantically more specialised verbs, in which a very specific meaning is forcing the overt marking of all three roles, in contrast to the more broader semantic range of a verb like geben.

[4.40] Attested Verbs

• abgewöhnen, benehmen, bescheren, schulden, überlassen, verdanken, vorsagen, widmen, zutrauen, schenken

[4.41] Examples

• Wir müssen ihm die Unpünktlichkeit abgewöhnen.
• Der Schreck benimmt ihm den Atem.
• Das Konzert beschert ihm ein Comeback.
• Ich schulde dir eine Antwort.
• ich überlasse dir das Fahrrad.
• Ich sage dir die Antwort vor.
• Ich widme dir das Buch.
• Ich traue dir die Reise zu.
• Ich schenke dir das Auto.

4.3.7 [ NAG ] Nominative + accusative + genitive

[4.42] There are also verbs that allow nominative, accusative and genitive, but those verbs often have a possible alternation dropping the genitive, which will be discussed in Section 4.7.8. In a few cases, the genitive argument seems to be in the process to be replaced by an accusative (see Sections [Section 4.9.5; sec:case-genitive-accusative-dative-swap]).

4.3.8 [ NAA ] Nominative + accusative + accusative

[4.43] There are a few situations in which verbs allow for two accusative objects, like with lehren (4.13 a) or abfragen (4.13 b). However, all of these verbs also allow for other constructions, either dropping one of the accusative arguments (see Section 4.7.2) or allowing an alternation between an accusative and a dative (see Section 4.9.4). There do not seem to be any verbs that obligatorily need two accusative objects.

[4.44] Double accusatives further regularly appear with quantified objects (4.14 a), see Section 4.3.9, and named objects (4.14 b), see Section 4.3.10. Also these verbs regularly allow for one of the accusatives to be dropped (4.14 c,d).

— Adverbial case-marked arguments —

4.3.9 [ NA ] Nominative + quantified object

[4.45] A special kind of arguments are quantified objects (cf. ‘Mensuralergänzung’, Eroms 2000: 203-204), exemplified in (4.15 a-e). Quantified objects are overtly marked accusative objects that often contain numerals (like in (4.15 d) or (4.15 e), in which einen is not an article, but the numeral one). Except for numerals, the quantification can also be instantiated by adjectives (like ganzen in (4.15 a)), indefinites (like jeden in (4.15 b)) or measure phrases (like zu laut in (4.15 c)).

[4.46] These quantified constituents are not governed arguments. First, they can easily be left out (all verbs in the examples are typical intransitive verbs). Second, and more importantly, they cannot be replaced by a pronoun nor be questioned by a question pronoun (viz. wen/was). Instead, they are questioned by adverbial interrogative words as listed at the examples above, indicating that the quantified constituents are adverbial phrases, not governed arguments.

[4.47] Yet, there is a special class of verbs that appear to obligatorily need such a quantified object. These objects are interrogated by wie viel? ‘how much’ (though interrogation with was ‘what’ seems also possible with some of them). Though debatable, I tend to classify these accusative constituents as arguments. Whatever the interpretation, when they are arguments, but also when these constituents are not considered to be arguments, then there is still something special with these verbs.

[4.48] A further argument to consider these accusative constituents as something special is that these verbs cannot be passivised, just like typical intransitive verbs (4.16 a). Even with non-quantified objects, these verbs still prohibit passivisation (4.16 b).

[4.49] An exception to this rule blocking passivisation for quantified objects are the verbs verdienen and zahlen. They can be used with quantified objects (4.17 b) and with non-quantified objects (4.17 a), similarly to kosten above. However, with these verbs passivisation is possible (4.17 c,d), so these verbs are considered to be taking regular accusative objects.

[4.50] Attested Verbs

• Quantity: enthalten, kosten, rechnen, sparen, wachsen, wiegen, zunehmen
• Quantity of time: dauern

[4.51] Examples

• Der Laster wiegt einen Zentner. Wieviel/was wiegt der Laster?
• Der Tisch kostet ein Jahresgehalt. Wieviel/was kostet der Tisch?
• Der Knochen wächst einen Millimeter pro Tag. Wieviel/*was wächst der Knochen?
• Ich rechne eine Flasche Wein pro Person. Wieviel/?was rechnest du pro Person?
• Er hat zehn kilo zugenommen. Wieviel/*was hat er zugenommen?

4.3.10 [ NAA ] Nominative + accusative + named object

[4.52] A special group of verbs can be used to performatively name persons or things. As proper names, such arguments are arguably without case in standard German (4.18 a), but with regular nouns these phrases are clearly accusatives (4.18 b). The effect are constructions with two accusative arguments. These arguments are normally questioned by the manner interrogative wie ‘how’, though in some situations was ‘what’ seems possible (4.18 c).

[4.53] The name in such naming constructions cannot be passivised (4.19 a,b), which also indicates that these accusative arguments have a special status in the grammar of the German language.

[4.54] Attested Verbs

• heißen, nennen, schelten, schimpfen, schmähen, taufen

[4.55] Examples

• UN-Beamte und internationale Medien heißen den 59-Jährigen weniger schmeichelhaft einen »Psychopathen« oder »Afrikas Miloevi«.¹²
• Er nennt den Gründer der Sowjetunion einen Verräter.¹³
• Sie schelten den A380 schon vor dem ersten Linienflug einen Dinosaurier.¹⁴
• Konservative schimpfen den Präsidenten schon einen Sozialisten.¹⁵

4.4 Alternations without diathesis

[4.56] Alternations without diathesis do not exist by definition for ‘bare’ alternations as discussed in this chapter. As noted in the introduction, this chapter discusses alternations that are only recognisable by the fact that there is a diathesis, without any other linguistic indication of the valency alternation. In other chapters this category will be well represented.

4.5 Diatheses with subject demotion

— [ SBJ > Ø ] — Verbativ

4.5.1 [ N | – ] Nominative drop

[4.57] In German, the nominative constituent shows agreement with the verb. It is typically not possible to have a sentence without this nominative constituent. For the few verbs that allow the nominative to be absent, a dummy pronoun es has to be inserted (see Section X for more details on this pronoun). For weather verbs like regnen ‘to rain’ it is arguably not a nominative that is dropped, but a nominative that is optionally added. I will discuss these two situation separately, although there is no overt grammatical distinction between a verb that allows for an optional nominative drop or an optional nominative addition (see Section 4.6.1 for the nominative addition). For some intransitive ‘dispersion’ verbs like stinken ‘to stink’ (4.20 a) it is possible to leave out the origin of the dispersion (4.20 b) to indicate the effect without knowledge of the cause.

[4.58] Attested Verbs

• Dispersion Verbs: abkühlen, blühen, dampfen, duften, klingeln, knistern, krachen, riechen, spriessen, stinken

[4.59] Examples

• Der Nachbar klingelt an der Tür. An der Tür klingelt es.
• Der Müll riecht. Hier riecht es.
• Das Wasser kühlt ab. Morgen kühlt es ab.
• Das kochen klappt noch nicht so gut. Jetzt klappt es.

4.5.2 [ NA | –A ] Nominative drop + accusative

[4.60] A few further apparent dropped nominatives are discussed here for completeness sake. They all appear to be highly idiosyncratic. The first phenomenon is the drop of the nominative with the verb geben when used in the meaning of ‘to produce’ (4.21 a,b).

[4.61] Attested Verbs

• brauchen, geben

[4.62] Examples

• Ich brauche euch. Es braucht alle im Kampf gegen die Diktatur.
• Der Verkäufer gibt den Lutscher gratis dazu. Den Lutscher gibt es gratis dazu.

4.5.3 [ ND | –D ] Nominative drop + dative

[4.63] Some verbs with nominative and dative allow for the nominative to be dropped and replaced by a valency-simulating pronoun es (4.22 a,b). In most cases of a pronoun es with a dative, the pronoun es is either phoric (4.23 a) or position-simulating (4.23 b), both of which do not count as the drop of an argument.

[4.64] Attested Verbs

• gefallen

4.5.4 [ NG | –G ] Nominative drop + genitive

[4.65] A few verbs with nominative and genitive arguments allow the nominative to be dropped, but the genitive to be retained (4.24 a-d).

[4.66] Attested Verbs

• bedürfen, entbehren

— [ OBJ > SBJ > Ø ] — Antikausativ

4.5.5 [ NA | –N ] haben Anticausative

[4.67] A typical anticausative verb allows for both a transitive (4.25 a) and an intransitive (4.25 b) in which the intransitive nominative is the same participant as the accusative from the transitive. This is attested by verbs like kochen ‘to cook’ (a,b). However, with this verb the Perfect of the intransitive exist both with auxiliaries haben (4.25 c) and sein (4.25 d). Semantically, the haben construction (4.25 c) seems to be the regular Perfect of the intransitive (4.25 b). The sein construction (4.25 d) is probably best analysed as the ‘Zustandspassiv’ (see Section X) of the transitive (4.25 a). Levin (1993: 31) used the label “Induced Action Alternation” for a similar alternation in English.

[4.68] Because this diathesis is unmarked it is difficult to decide whether this should be classified as an anticausative or as a causative. Because of the option for a ‘Zustandspassiv’ I have categorised this alternation here as an anticausative (cf. Scheibl 2006: 355). A highly similar construction with only a singly intransitive Perfekt auxiliary is discussed below as a causative (see Section 4.6.2).

[4.69] Attested Verbs

• abnehmen, abreißen, abstoßen, anfangen, anhalten, aufmachen, backen, baden, beginnen, bewegen, braten, bremsen, duschen, fliegen, heilen, kochen, landen, läuten, öffnen, rauchen, schließen, spielen (Tonträger), starten, stoppen, umdrehen, wiegen, zählen, zünden

[4.70] Examples

• Der Doktor heilt die Wunde. Die Wunde hat geheilt. Die Wunde ist geheilt.
• Der Mitarbeiter öffnet den Laden. Der Laden hat geöffnet/aufgemacht. Der Laden ist geöffnet/aufgemacht.
• Ich rauche eine Zigarette. Das Feuer hat geraucht. Die Zigarette ist geraucht.
• Ich beginne einen Streit. Der Streit hat begonnen. Der Krieg ist begonnen.
• Er landet das Flugzeug. Das Flugzeug hat gelandet. Das Flugzeug ist gelandet.
• Ich wiege den Patienten vor und nach der Behandlung. Der Patient hat 50 Kilo gewogen. Der Patient ist gewogen.
• Ich habe das Werk angefangen. Der Film hat angefangen. Das Werk ist angefangen, aber nicht vollendet.
• Er hat mich geduscht. Ich habe geduscht.
• Er zählt mich zu den Menschen. Ich habe zu den Menschen gezählt. Die Tage sind gezählt.
• Ich habe das Boot umgedreht. Das Boot hat umgedreht. Das Boot ist umgedreht.
• Ich habe die Bombe gezündet. Die Bombe hat gezündet.
• Ich habe das Boot abgestoßen. Das Boot ist abgestoßen. Die Fähre hat abgestoßen.
• Ich habe die Platte gespielt. Die Platte hat gespielt. Die Platte ist gespielt.

[4.71] Notes

[4.72] A causative reading seems to be available with duschen ‘to take a shower’ (4.26 a). With an accusative this verbs means ‘to give something else a shower’ (4.26 b). However, both intransitive Perfekt auxiliaries haben and sein are possible (4.26 c,d), so I classify this alternation here with the anticausatives. A parallel situation arises with baden ‘to bathe’.

[4.73] The verb abnehmen is possibly better analysed as two different lexemes, either with the meaning ‘to take away’ (4.27 a) or ‘to reduce’ (4.27 b).

[4.74] The verb anhalten appears to be an exception. In the meaning ‘to stop’ this verb can clearly be used both transitively and intransitively with a haben Perfect (4.28 a). However, the sein Zustandspassiv is not possible (4.28 b). The lexeme anhalten has another meaning, viz. ‘to admonish’ which does allow the sein Zustandspassiv (4.28 c).